Dates

• Existence: 1907 August 15 - 1978 December 3

Biography

Charles E. Smith was an early aviator in the Pacific Northwest.

Charles "Chuck" Engle Smith was born August 15, 1907 in Portland, Oregon to Elmer Chester and Lorene Layton Smith. Though born in Oregon, he grew up in Spokane, Washington. His father was a traveling railroad auditor and because his mother died when he was eight, he was raised by relatives. He graduated from North Central High School in Spokane in 1927. After his schooling, he worked a variety of jobs, including at a soda fountain, at a meat market, in the railways, doing highway construction, as a commercial fisherman, at a newspaper, as an insurance salesman, and at an auto parts dealer. Looking for steadier work he turned to aviation and enrolled at the Boeing School of Aeronautics in Oakland, California which had opened in 1929. He received his ground school diploma by summer of 1930 as well as an aeronautical radio operators license and a private pilot's license, flying a Boeing 40B-4.

About a year later he got a position with United Airlines as a sales representative. Later he became a line service man in flight operations at the School. In 1934 he was hired by Northwest Airlines as an agent based in Seattle, Washington. He worked between Seattle and Spokane for several years before becoming permanently based in Seattle as a flight dispatcher. In this role he consulted reports on weather, runway information, and flight delays and cancellations, and then would determine if landing was safe. Smith often accompanied pilots on flights in order to learn the routes and become familiar with the aircraft.

During World War II Northwest Airlines held a contract with the federal government under the Air Transport Command. For this contract they would transport troops and supplies and ferry airplanes to different locations. Smith served on some of these flights.

Smith served for some time as head of the Air Line Dispatchers Association (ALDA). Smith retired in 1970 shortly after the introduction of the Boeing 747 and other jetliners. He died December 3, 1978.

Biographical sketch based on donor information.

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