From Flying Machines to the Supersonic Jet Age

KLM operated the very first commercial passenger and mail flight to Barbados in a 14-seat Lockheed from Piarco Flying Field to Seawell, then just a grassy runway, on 19th October 1938. For KLM’s first passenger flight, schools, public offices and some private businesses closed so that as many people as possible could witness the historic event. In 1939, with the outbreak of WWII, KLM’s planes were pre-empted and they did not resume their services until 1945. In 1940, when the first construction work at Piarco Airport was almost finished, the need for a regional airline carrier was obvious. But the $64,000 question was, who had the entrepreneurial flair and knowledge of flying to set up a Caribbean carrier from scratch? The answer soon came from Trinidad and Tobago’s new Governor, Major Sir Hubert Winthrop Young, KCMG DSO (1885-1950), who had been keenly interested in creating a Caribbean air service since he took office in 1938. Lady Young, his wife, herself an amateur flyer and a member of the Trinidad Light Aeroplane Club established at Piarco in 1938, invited Lowell Yerex from Honduras to come to Trinidad as their guest to assess the situation. Yerex was born in the British dominion of New Zealand in 1895. His father sent him to college in the United States, where he earned a teaching degree. He left teaching to serve as a pilot with the British in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I. After the war, he returned to the United States where he did ‘barnstorming’ during the roaring twenties. Barnstorming earned its name from the aerobatic pilots who would Chapter Six The Birth of BWIA