Archie W. League was the first air-traffic controller — here’s how the daredevil pilot became the angel of air safety
Born in Missouri at the dawn of the Age of Flight, Archie League lives on "through the annals of aviation history."
Archie League soared through the skies, skimming cow barns co-piloted by danger.
The young aerial daredevil gained a bird’s-eye view on the need for safety.
A Missouri native, League was hired to direct aircraft at Lambert Field in St. Louis in 1929. This incubator of dauntless pilots and air safety seers grew into Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.
The barnstormer forged a league of his own in aviation history.
Archie League is the nation's first air-traffic controller — and became an essential figure in American and global air safety for nearly half a century.
"Through one man’s eyes we can see all of aviation history almost to the present," St. Louis author and historian Jeannette Cooperman told Fox News Digital.
Archie W. League, the nation's first air-traffic controller, reported for duty at Lambert Field in St. Louis in 1929. (Public Domain/National Archives, courtesy of FAA)
"By the time he left the industry, we had been through air wars and the atomic age and very sophisticated advances in radar. League saw it all."
He interrupted his career in aviation to serve as a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II.
He returned to civilian life and became a key executive in what’s now the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
"Through one man’s eyes we can see all of aviation history almost to the present."
After saving a single pilot on a stormy night in St. Louis, League helped pioneer methods, mechanics and logistics that make air travel today the world’s safest mode of transportation.
Millions of Americans, along with many more around the world, fly every day above the vast safety net that League first stitched together with flags and a folding chair in the American Heartland.
The Spirit of St. Louis
Archie William League was born on Aug. 19, 1907, in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, to Archie L. and Itaska Snow (Magner) League.
Like many boys his age, League was gripped by the thrill of flight.
Archie League was a barnstorming stunt pilot in the 1920s, flouting danger for thrills. This is a scene from "The Bell Hop" movie lobbycard, 1921. (LMPC via Getty Images)
He was only a teen in the 1920s when he took to the air with the daredevil craze of the day: barnstorming dangerously over rural and small-town America, thrilling earth-bound dreamers below.
"Spinning, diving, and doing loop-the-loops above the clouds, engine roaring, little plane shaking," Cooperman wrote last year in The Common Reader, published by Washington University in St. Louis.
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"He and the other barnstormers in his flying circus entertained folks across Missouri and Illinois."
St. Louis emerged as the center of global aviation in the late 1920s after another essential figure in the history of air travel flew past over a barrier in a feat that still grips the imagination.
Charles Lindbergh, a Lambert Field mail pilot, flew non-stop solo across the Atlantic Ocean on May 21, 1927. His effort and his aircraft, the Spirit of St. Louis, were funded by some of the city’s leading businessmen.
Pilot Charles Lindbergh poses alongside his famous plane "The Spirit of St. Louis," circa May 1927. (NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
"Lindbergh became a world hero who would remain in the public eye for decades," the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum reports on its website.
"His flight touched off the ‘Lindbergh boom’ in aviation — aircraft industry stocks rose in value, and interest in flying skyrocketed."
"His communication tools were simple: a red flag for ‘hold’ and a checkered one for ‘go.'"
Lindbergh instantly made the world smaller. And he made his home airfield busier. Too busy for the times.
Pilots gripped by aviation fever took off, flew and landed amid growing danger over the heartland air hub of St. Louis.
First among ‘unsung heroes of the skies’
The City of St. Louis hired Archie League to solve the emerging problem of crowded runways at Lambert Field.
"His communication tools were simple: a red flag for ‘hold’ and a checkered one for ‘go,’" the FAA reports in its history of air traffic control.
"Archie W. League is considered to be the first air-traffic controller, preventing collisions between aircraft with his simple system of a red flag for ‘stop’ and a checkered flag for ‘go.’" (Public Domain, courtesy of the FAA)
"His other equipment included a folding chair, drinking water and a pad for taking notes."
League was actually something of a new kind of traffic cop — "the first person on the ground to direct planes so they would not collide," notes NASA in a timeline of landmark moments in air-traffic control.
Growing danger grew out of the clouds, too.
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"In October 1929, a small biplane faced severe weather conditions, including dense fog, as it approached [Lambert] airfield in St. Louis," reports the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA).
"As the aircraft neared the field, League transmitted a series of calm and concise instructions to guide the pilot to a safe landing."
It was, the organization claims, the first-known instance of an aircraft guided to safety by a specialist on the ground.
The Washington air traffic control center, circa 1943. The rise in America's air traffic system coincided with the need for such services during World War II. (Public Domain, courtesy FAA)
The moment, NATCA notes, "laid the foundation for the role of air traffic controllers as unsung heroes of the skies."
The air-traffic control industry took flight side by side with air travel.
League earned a degree in aeronautical engineering from Washington University in 1937, then joined the Federal Bureau of Air Commerce. It has since evolved into the Federal Aviation Administration.
Archie League "laid the foundation for the role of air traffic controllers as unsung heroes of the skies."
Col. Archie League served as a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Forces battling Japan in the Pacific in World War II, before returning to lead the industry.
He eventually became the FAA’s director of air traffic controllers in 1965, with responsibility for air-traffic control and safety across the entire nation.
League retired in 1973.
Stansted Airport control tower, United Kingdom. The air-traffic control industry began with Missouri native Archie League, who waved flags to direct planes at Lambert Field in St Louis, notes the NATS, the air-traffic control authority for the U.K. (NATS U.K.)
The miracle of modern transportation delivers millions of people to all corners of the earth safely every single day today.
Synonymous with safety
Archie William League died on Oct. 1, 1986 in Annandale, Virginia.
He was 79 years old.
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League’s name, says NATCA, is "reverently whispered through the annals of aviation history."
Archie League made a lasting impact on the history of aviation that can still be felt today. His groundbreaking work as an air-traffic controller led to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association naming their Medal of Safety Awards after him. (Airline Pilots Association/National Air Traffic Controllers Association /FAA)
The greatest testament to his contributions to the modern world is found in the safety record of air travel.
Delays, in-flight passenger dust-ups and the rare tragic disaster generate headlines.
Yet there were only six fatal accidents worldwide in all of 2023, according to industry resource FlightGlobal.com.
Archie League's name "is reverently whispered through the annals of aviation history."
League's name is synonymous with safety among people in the aviation industry. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association honors its top members each year with the Archie League Medals of Safety.
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The legacy of the global industry "began with the brave actions of a single air traffic controller guiding a struggling aircraft to safety," NATCA notes.
Passenger, left, checks in on United Airlines at Chicago O'Hare International Airport; Archie League, right, the nation's first air-traffic controller. (Scott Olson/Getty Images and courtesy FAA )
"The story of Archie League and the genesis of federal air traffic control serves as a testament to the power of human ingenuity and collaboration in shaping the course of aviation history."
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