Cathay Air company formed

Chances are, if you are flying anywhere in or out of Asia, you fly on Cathay Air. The airline company that started with a single McDonnell Douglas DC3 now operates more than 130 aircraft serving 111 destinations. In 2009 some 23 million passengers crossed the skies on Cathay Air flights, along with 1.52 million tons of cargo and air. Now reaching destinations all over the world, from Abu Dhabi, UAE, to Zhengzhou, China, it started with the investment by two men of one Hong Kong Dollar each.

On this day, September 24, in 1946 Cathay Pacific Air was founded by the American Roy C Farrell and Australian Sydney H de Kantzow. The name, reportedly borne out of a Manila hotel room, is the ancient word for China. The “Pacific” was added in the hopes that one day their routes would take them across the ocean.

The airliner started with “Betsy,” a converted Douglas DC3 that began flying mainly between Bangkok, Manila, Singapore and Shanghai, with occasional diversions as far out as Sydney, Australia. Betsy was sold in 1955, and then by sheer coincidence rediscovered, almost 30 years later, in the Australian outback and still flying. Cathay bought the aircraft back, repainted it in the original 1940s livery and made it the centerpiece of the Hong Kong Science Museum, where it hangs from the ceiling to this day.