[2] Fairchild designed the aircraft in response to a Pan American Airways request[2] for a small flying boat to operate on their river routes along the Amazon and Yangtze.

The result was a conventional high-wing cantilever monoplane with its radial engine mounted above the wing in a streamlined nacelle.

Before construction of the prototype was complete, however, Pan American no longer required the aircraft to operate in China, and Fairchild optimised the design for the Brazilian tropics.

The sole A-942-B was specially built for the American Museum of Natural History and was used by naturalist Richard Archbold on his second expedition to Papua New Guinea in 1936–1937.

The A-942 bought by industrialist Garfield Wood was sold to the British American Ambulance Corps before being transferred to the RAF, who operated it in Egypt for air-sea rescue.