This big, trimotor airplane landed once at Tucson on June 19, 1930 at 6:25PM. It was flown by Hap Russell carrying six unidentified passengers. They arrived at Tucson from Los Angeles, CA, remained overnight, and departed for El Paso, TX the next morning at 7:45AM. Russell noted "Airline" in the Remarks column of the Register. According to the FAA record, as of the date of this flight NC456E was owned by Western Air Express, Inc.

Below is a photograph of NC456E taken at Holbrook, AZ in 1929. This image comes to us courtesy of the Navajo County Historical Society.

Fokker NC456E, Holbrook, AZ 1929

Interestingly, we have the names of some of the people.* They are, L to R (front row only; children excluded): Shorty Thomas, Charlie Cooley, UNK, UNK, T.J. Koury (short man in the white shirt), Frank Baumback, Dan Divelbess (sideways; suit), Bill Hookway, Frank Felsch, UNK, Tom Jordan, John Kist (white shirt), Judge Jesse Crosby (vest), Frank Minnie, Frank O'Connell, Emma O'Connell (?), Judge W.D. Easley (under tail), George Schaffer, Columbus Giragi (white shirt), W. Dean Nutting (dark jacket), UNK, pilot (?) J.M. Sheppard, Mr. Lockley.

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* Why should we care? Because the search engines will crawl this page soon after I put it online and every name will then be searchable by their relatives who are googling their grandfathers and grandmothers.

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UPLOADED: 12/22/07 REVISED: