United States Overseas Airlines
United States Overseas Airlines (USOA) was a supplemental air carrier founded and controlled by Dr. Ralph Cox Jr, a dentist turned aviator, based at Cape May County Airport in Wildwood, New Jersey, where it had a substantial operation.
However, in the early 1960s USOA fell into significant financial distress leading to its 1964 shuttering by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), the defunct federal agency that, at the time, controlled almost all commercial air transportation in the United States.
The airline originally did business as Ocean Air Tradeways (OAT), a dba for the aviation activities of Ralph Cox, starting in March 1946.
[4] Aviation pioneer Charles F. Blair Jr helped Cox with collecting the war surplus aircraft from mostly-empty Bradley Field in Spring 1946, its conversion to civilian configuration and first commercial flight from New York City to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia on behalf of Aramco (including transporting Egyptian leader Mahmoud El Nokrashy Pasha to Cairo, Egypt)[5] in November 1946.
In 1955, a USOA DC-4 on lease to another operator supporting construction of the Distant Early Warning Line (a Cold War radar net designed to detect Soviet bombers) in Canada's far north ran out of fuel and landed on frozen Hudson Bay.
USOA successfully towed the aircraft across 30 miles (48 km) of open water to Churchill, Manitoba, hauled it out, took the wings off and shipped it by rail.
[18] Further, due to refusing to pay alimony, a judge awarded his wife control of the airline, which lasted six weeks until Cox could appeal.
[19] Over the next few years, Cox crossed state lines with the child twice more, moving her to Pennsylvania, and later to Mississippi, trying to find a judge to award him custody.
The January 1960 collapse of Transocean Air Lines, at one time the undisputed leader among the supplementals, did not help USOA, though it did pick up Transocean's western Pacific service that hopped from Honolulu to Wake Island to Guam to Okinawa, a low-cost alternative for American military and dependents in those parts.
[35] The situation became critical when in March 1962 USOA failed an inspection that eliminated its ability to carry military charters.
[37] Ironically, in its entire history USOA never had a single passenger fatality,[37] which set it apart from other supplementals, which, in general, had an accident rate far higher than the scheduled carriers.
[40] The CAB did, in fact, give USOA some flexibility on this score after repeated entreaties and in recognition of its financial distress, allowing it to fly five flights per week on certain routes in 1963, while noting that the window for this business was closing.
[41] By 1964, USOA had resorted to raiding funds nominally held in trust for taxes and was failing to meet payroll or refund tickets as required.
The Board said it looked at everything that had been submitted, even material previously excluded by the administrative law judge as irrelevant, and found "no substantial evidence to support the petitioners' strong-worded accusations.
