An on-time arrival of the PSA Collection: Remembering “The World's Friendliest Airline.”

Staff and volunteers in the Archives have been working steadily for more than ten months to process materials given to the Museum over many years by many donors to produce the Pacific Southwest Airlines Collection. Under the direction of Archivist Debbie Seracini, two volunteer archivists inventoried over 90 boxes of material – including thousands of documents, photographs, slides, manuals, and memorabilia, arranging the various items into logical groups, and rehousing it all in archival permanent storage containers.

The PSA collection is notable for the breadth of its coverage of the history and workings of the airline: The materials include everything from the early history of Kenny Friedkin’s flying school to extensive corporate documents, from information and images of the aircraft fleet to a comprehensive collection of training and operations manuals on all aspects of the airline’s day-to-day workings.

The collection also includes a wealth of publicity materials – including photographs, advertising film and video -- we even have a copy of the original 45 rpm jingle, “Catch Us, PSA!” Invaluable records on the PSA/USAir fleet include material about the BAe-146, Boeing 727, Boeing 737- 200, Douglas DC-3/C-47 Skytrain, Douglas DC-4/C-54 Skymaster, Lockheed L-188 Electra, Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, McDonnell Douglas MD-80, and McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30.

Beyond these business and operations records, the PSA collection includes substantial donations of material from PSA workers – pilots, flight attendants, engineers, and maintenance crew – including scrapbooks, personal memorabilia, and photograph albums of events, retirement parties, and reunions. Recently acquired material include first responder records and memorabilia regarding the crash of Flight 182 in 1978 and personal papers and artifacts of PSA employees who served as advisors to the PSA Mini-Stews flight attendant training program.

Assembling the diverse material into one cohesive collection entailed the organization of these records and artifacts into eight different categories: I. History of Pacific Southwest Airline; II. Corporate Documents; III. Operations – Facilities, aircraft, training, and flight operations; IV. Audio-visual Materials; V. Miscellaneous; VI. Artifacts; and VII. Aircraft Manuals. More information about the PSA Collection can be found on the Museum’s website, as well as a detailed finding guide to the collection.

This valuable resource complements the Museum’s PSA display exhibit, the digital collection of PSA photographs on Flickr, and the previously published material on PSA, including SDASM digital archivist Alan Renga and Mark E. Mentges’ book, Pacific Southwest Airlines, Images of Aviation (Arcadia, 2010) and Gary Kissel’s Poor Sailors' Airline: A History of Pacific Southwest Airlines (Paladwr Press, 2002).

We are honored to have been entrusted with the care and maintenance of this extraordinary collection of materials and are pleased to make it available to researchers of San Diego aviation history and to the general public.

Below are links to the PSA collection.

Photos: https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=49487266%40N07&text=psa&view_all=1

Film: https://www.youtube.com/user/sdasmarchives/search?query=psa

Descriptive finding guide: http://sandiegoairandspace.org/collection/item/pacific-southwest-airlines-collection