The Brief Flight of Dartmouth Airways

In the fall of 1946, a curious note appeared in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. Nestled among class updates from the Class of ’39 was this line:

“Herb Hischland, your erstwhile secretary, just reported a successful trip on the Dartmouth Airways…”

To modern ears, it sounds almost like a joke—Dartmouth Airways? But in the months following World War II, a group of alumni tried to make that phrase a fixture of daily life in the Upper Valley.

A Skyward Idea

Dartmouth Airways was a short-lived charter airline based out of the small municipal airport in Lebanon, New Hampshire. The operation was the brainchild of a few entrepreneurial Dartmouth graduates who saw an opportunity in the rapidly changing aviation landscape of postwar America. Surplus military aircraft, a newly trained population of veteran pilots, and a country eager to move faster and farther made it plausible—even idealistic—to believe that small towns like Hanover could become connected by air.

While details on the day-to-day operations are sparse, what’s clear is that the airline was not just a novelty. It offered real service: regularly scheduled flights to Boston and New York, with the promise of shrinking long car or train journeys down to just a few hours. In an era before interstates and long before Dartmouth Coach, the idea had a certain visionary logic.

Dartmouth’s Aviation Moment

The 1940s were a moment of aviation enthusiasm across the country. GI Bill funding made pilot training accessible to returning veterans, and the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) actively promoted small-scale regional carriers. Lebanon’s airport—developed in part thanks to New Deal-era infrastructure programs—was one of many rural airfields that hoped to punch above its weight.

Dartmouth Airways slotted neatly into this context: not quite a commuter airline, not quite a mail carrier, but something uniquely local and powered by school pride. It made for good alumni press, and—at least for a brief moment—it brought the Green just a little closer to Boston and beyond.

A Brief Ascent

The service didn’t last long. Like many small postwar airlines, Dartmouth Airways was grounded by rising costs, regulatory pressures, and the sheer challenge of maintaining reliable service in a region where fog, snow, and unpredictable terrain often dictated flight schedules.

But for a brief, optimistic moment, students, alumni, and faculty could look skyward and imagine a new era of access to the world beyond the White Mountains. Dartmouth Airways represented more than just travel—it was an emblem of forward motion in a postwar world.