Photo courtesy Special Collections, University of Memphis Libraries.
C&S Airlines stewardesses in 1952.
The Chicago and Southern Airlines was one of the first — if not the first — to operate out of Memphis Municipal Airport.
It has a rather complicated history, beginning in the 1930s as Pacific Seaboard Air Lines, and operating mainly along the West Coast. The company later acquired the right to deliver airmail from Chicago to New Orleans, making stops along the way — including Memphis.
In the airline’s early days, its slogan was “The Valley Level Route,” which made little sense to anybody flying from Chicago to New Orleans, and in later years C&S promoted its “Dixieliner Service,” which at least had some connections with the South. This photo shows C&S stewardesses in 1952. In those days, according to the airline’s travel guides, if a passenger had a baby with a soiled diaper, all she had to do was summon a stewardess, and “she’ll come a’running, with ‘Chux’ and powder.”
Times have certainly changed. In 1953, C&S merged with Delta Air Lines.
