TWA Lockheed Model 9E Orion

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The Lockheed Model 9 Orion is a single-engine passenger aircraft built in 1931 for commercial airlines. Designed by Richard A. von Hake, it was the last wood aircraft produced by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. The Orion was the last design using a forward top cockpit similar to the Vega, plus the NACA cowling introduced with the Air Express. Lockheed used the same basic fuselage mold and wing for all these wooden designs while the Orion also featured an enclosed cabin and seating for six passengers. The Orion received its approval certificate on 6 May 1931. The Orion 9E is one of three aircraft manufactured with a 450 hp Pratt & Whitney Wasp SC-1 engine.

TWA, which was based in New York City, began operations as Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT) on July 8, 1929 with a coast to coast route from Los Angeles to New York. Western Air Express (WAE), a competing air carrier, had begun service to Albuquerque two months earlier with a similar route from Los Angeles but their route continued on east to Amarillo, Wichita, and Kansas City. WAE was also operating other routes but due to the great depression and a ruling called the Watres Bill which involved awarding a new air mail contract that both carriers needed, TAT and the Los Angeles to Kansas City route of WAE were forced to merge. The merger took place on July 16, completed by July 24, 1930, and the one carrier became known as Transcontinental and Western Air, or “TWA”. In April 1945, a ticket office was opened in downtown Albuquerque at the Hilton Hotel which remained open through the 1970s.

Three Lockheed Orion’s were flown by TWA on their east to west mail and passenger routes. The aircraft began service to Albuquerque in 1933. One Orion, NC12278 -#257, crashed on January 15, 1934 from fuel exhaustion on the mesa west of the TWA West Mesa Airport. The pilot George Rice made gear up landing and the aircraft received only minor damage allowing it to be salvaged. The other Model 9E Orion’s flown by TWA were NC12277- #256 and NC12283 -#258.

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