Just as the feeder airline awards were being made by the CAB in 1947 and 1948, financing for airlines was drying up. Even though the national economy was generally prosperous, several failed securities offerings by unsuccessful aviation enterprises had soured the public on airline stocks. Southern Airways was struggling financially while trying to organize its operations. Southern owned a DC-3, which it leased to Tom Davis's Piedmont Aviation in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, so that Davis could get his feeder carrier, Piedmont Airlines, into operation. The lease provided much-needed revenue for Southern. More financing was obtained late in 1948 through the efforts of Birmingham, Alabama-based investment firms because Southern was, in a sense, the hometown airline as Frank Hulse lived and maintained Southern's executive office in the Brown-Marx Building.
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