Dating to the late 1940s, this vintage educational film shows a novel means of delivering mail — using a helicopter. The helicopter shown in the film belongs to Los Angeles Airways, and is a Sikorski SK-51. At 1:52, a Western Airlines Convair 240 is shown in service, and landing at LAX World Airport. At 3:11, mail sorting operations are conducted by clerks. At 4:00 the helicopter arrives. At 4:40, you can just barely see LAX’s historic Terminal One in the right side of the frame.
Los Angeles Airways (LAA) was a helicopter airline based in Westchester, Los Angeles, California. LAA offered services to area airports, as well as Disneyland from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and the heliport at the Newporter Resort, Newport Beach, California, now the Hyatt Regency. LAA had several firsts, including the first regularly scheduled helicopter mail service on October 1, 1947. Service to Ontario and San Bernardino was initiated on December 17, 1953.
In April 1957 they scheduled 17 weekday departures from LAX to 11 heliports from North Hollywood to San Bernardino to Santa Ana to Long Beach; they didn’t fly to downtown Los Angeles. The OAG doesn’t say what helicopter, but the drawing shows an S-55.
LAA was the first civil operator of the Sikorsky S-61, introducing it on March 1, 1962, purchased at a price of $650,000 each. Los Angeles Airways ceased operations in 1971 after failure to consummate a contract in which it would have been purchased by Golden West Airlines.
The Sikorsky H-5, (initially designated R-5 and also known as S-48, S-51 and by company designation VS-327) was a helicopter built by Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation.
It was used by the United States Air Force, and its predecessor, the United States Army Air Forces, as well as the United States Navy and United States Coast Guard (with the designations HO2S and HO3S). It was also used by the United States Post Office Department.
In December 1946, an agreement was signed between the British company Westland Aircraft and Sikorsky to produce a British version of the H-5, to be manufactured under license in Britain as the Westland-Sikorsky WS-51 Dragonfly. By the time production ceased in 1951, more than 300 examples of all types of the H-5 had been built.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
