Today's Tidbit... Flying to Away Games in 1940

Michigan and Alabama play in the Rose Bowl today. Both teams and most fans from other parts of the country flew to California for the game rather than driving or traveling by rail. However, that was not always the case, and to illustrate that point, we will look at the first time Michigan’s football team flew to California in 1940, a weekend in which a handful of significant figures in football history happened to fly to their games at the end of September 1940.

It was unusual for football teams to fly to games until after WWII; instead, they traveled by rail. Commercial air travel was not in its infancy by then, but it was still a toddler. United, a top airline, had limited routes, and its propellor-driven planes had to stop at several times along long-distance routes to refuel.

United Air Lines route map in 1940. (Wiki)

To boost passenger levels on the Pacific Coast, United borrowed a technique used by the railroads by publishing a brochure combining the year's football and flight schedules. How many football fans flew commercially for road trip games is unknown, but the brochure below shows the limited number of daily flights heading north and south along the coast, so the number of flying fans could not have been large.