Bettis: Where Pittsburgh Aviation Took Off by Brian Butko and Sue Morris

Bettis
Where Pittsburgh Aviation Took Off
by Brian Butko and Sue Morris
Senator John Heinz History Center, 124 pp., paperback $19.95

Most of the 9 million people flying to or through Pittsburgh know only Pittsburgh International Airport, a sprawling, 10,000-acre facility, the largest civil-aviation field in Pennsylvania today. But in fact, it’s only the latest in a succession of four major airports to serve the area. Authors Brian Butko and Sue Morris ably tell the origin story of the region’s first substantial aviation center — Bettis Field, situated 8 miles south of downtown near McKeesport. Calling it the “epicenter of Pittsburgh aviation,” they make a compelling case.

Butko is familiar to readers of Pennsylvania history as a veteran author on the Lincoln Highway and roadside culture topics. Coauthor Morris is a freelance Pittsburgh historian. In 50 brief chapters, they take readers from the dawn of aviation, with hot-air balloons, dirigibles and barnstorming aerobatic pilots, through the industry’s giddy, golden years. Playing a cornerstone role was Bettis Field, opened in 1926 as Pittsburgh–McKeesport Airport.

For more than two decades, the privately financed airport served as an incubator for the industry, becoming a host for not only scheduled airline service, freight shipments and air mail but also flight schools and mechanic training, airplane dealers and repair shops, and general aviation. Aviation pioneers Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart visited Bettis on multiple occasions. Aviatrixes — female pilots — played a surprisingly large role, as did Black flyers, and Butko and Morris provide profiles of several of them.

Started by entrepreneurs and taken over by corporations, Bettis faced competition from the nearby county-funded Allegheny County Airport (opened 1931). It closed in 1949, fading further into memory with the 1952 opening of the lavish-but-distant Greater Pittsburgh Airport in Moon Township.

Vintage photos, blueprints, maps, postcards, stock certificates, tickets and other memorabilia illustrate a narrative historical text that, along the way, includes elements of grit, daring, romance, tragedy, folly and chicanery. Most chapters fill two-page spreads, which makes for easy sampling of the content. The book includes an index, selected bibliography, resource guide, and listing of past and present airports in Allegheny, Westmoreland and Butler counties.

Bettis is a well-told story of a near-forgotten chapter in Pennsylvania transportation history.

Dan Cupper
Editor, Railway & Locomotive Historical Society