Bellanca Aircruiser

The Bellanca Aircruiser and its earlier Airbus forebears were high-wing, single-engine transport aircraft built by Bellanca Aircraft Corporation of New Castle, Delaware, and intended as workhorses for passengers or freight. They could be fitted with wheels, floats or skis, and were powered by either a Wright Cyclone or a Pratt and Whitney Hornet engine. The first Airbus, the P-100 of 1930, carried twelve to fourteen passengers and flew 4,400 miles in a record 35 hours aloft; the P-200 followed with a more reliable air-cooled engine and served both airlines, including a float ferry across New York harbour, and the US Army Air Corps as the C-27. The final Aircruiser carried a useful load greater than its own empty weight. A 1934 federal ban on single-engine airline transports closed the American market, but the type found a long second life in northern Canada, where several worked mining and supply routes into the 1970s.