9 |
17 |
||
|
They moved massive vats of the airline ’ s historical archives from Braniff ’ s Dallas Love Field hangar to the family ’ s property and farms . “ They stayed there for decades until I started going through each one of them and organizing them after my flying days had ended ,” Cass recalls .
The Cass family trust oversees two entities : Braniff Airways , Incorporated ’ s commercial arm , and the Braniff Airways Foundation — a non-profit founded in 1978 originally to help Braniff employees with health and insurance issues . The foundation is the repository for Braniff ’ s archives .
This breathtaking collection , housed in five locations , contains 100 million pages of Braniff corporate documents and 40,000 historical items . The vast list runs the gamut : rare models ( including original Calders ), employee records , press releases , photos and negatives ,
|
17 Pop-up Braniff boutique at the airliners international collectibles show at DFW airport in April 2024 . // CHRIS SLOAN
18 The fourth Braniff history and architecture conference will be held on Saturday , September 14 , 2024 , in Dallas , Texas . Tickets for the day-long Braniff history event are on sale now at www . braniffinternational . com . The event ’ s travel partner is the Hilton Doubletree Hotel at Love Field . // CHRIS SLOAN
|
18
brochures , posters , furniture from the Dallas Love Terminal of The Future , B-Liner employees newsletters , 800 boxes of legal documents , promotional films , timetables , engineering manuals , advertising layouts , signage , a surprisingly and invaluable rare collection of commissioned art from Latin America and Braniff Place , and more , dating from the airline ’ s founding in 1928 to the present .
Remarkably , every bit of the public relations material has been digitized to the tune of eight terabytes . The entire archive itself is 50 % digitized . New projects include photographing physical assets
|
like furniture , clocks , and uniforms and digitizing all the engineering drawings . Braniff manufactured and designed much of its own ground and maintenance equipment , which is also covered . This digitization process , which began in 2012 , employs three full-time people along with Ben and Collin Ice , Chief Operating Officer and the technical genius behind the operation . Ben and his team at the Foundation Archives are aided by some 20 volunteers . Twenty percent of the collection is donated . It is safe to say that some existing airlines fall short of the meticulous organization , preservation , and staggering scale of the Braniff Archives . |