Toccoa Gets Visit from Historic DC-3

A historic plane visits Stephens County.

Thursday, a 1930’s-era DC-3 airplane landed for a stop at the Toccoa-Stephens County Airport.

The plane belongs to a non-profit foundation that receives support and hanger space for the plane from American Airlines, to whom this plane once belonged.

Gene Christian was in charge of the plane.

He said they brought it through Toccoa as part of training a new pilot to fly the historic plane.

Christian said 15 or so active pilots take the plane to around 20 air shows each year, as well as other events.

However, this is not just any historic plane.

Christian said this is the oldest DC-3 still flying out of about 16,000 like it that were made.

“It went to work for American Airlines on March 2, 1937,” said Christian. “It is 78 years old.”

Christian went on to say that the DC-3 is the plane that changed the world of air travel forever.

He explained that prior to the DC-3, passenger air travel was limited because the routes were not profitable unless the planes also transported mail for the government because the government would pay the planes to carry that mail.

“The DC-3 was the first airplane that put all the modern technology together and was able to fly enough people so that the airplane was profitable over routes that did not have mail subsidies and suddenly, instead of each plane having two or three stops in a straight line, they could branch out with the hub and spoke routine and every airline now does that,” said Christian.

Christian said that the plane has a few more shows to get to this year, before going into its hanger in Tulsa, Oklahoma for the winter months.