Otto Praeger

Otto Praeger (February 27, 1871 – February 4, 1948) was the Washington, D.C., postmaster from 1913 to 1915 and was the Second Assistant United States Postmaster General from 1915 to 1921. He was responsible for implementing airmail from 1918 to 1927.

Biography Praeger was born in Victoria, Texas, on February 27, 1871, to Herman Praeger and Louisa Schultze. He attended the public schools in San Antonio, Texas, then the University of Texas. In 1889 he started work as a newspaper reporter, then an editor, and he worked in journalism until 1914. He married Annie C. Hardesty on February 27, 1897. He married Carrie Will Coffman on April 20, 1928.

On April 1, 1913, Praeger became the postmaster for Washington, D.C., remaining in that position until September 1, 1915, when he became Second Assistant Postmaster General of the United States.

For a brief period in the summer of 1918, the United States Army Air Service provided the pilots and planes for the airmail service, but then the Post office department, dissatisfied with the discipline of Army pilots and the quality of their equipment, began to hire its own pilots and acquire its own planes. However, this effort resulted in the hiring of ex-Army pilots and the purchase of ex-Army aircraft. Admonishing the pilots never to perform stunts while flying mail planes, he insisted that they follow fixed schedules regardless of the weather, and a contentious relationship developed between Praeger and the pilots. refused to take off from Belmont Field on Long Island due to fog and Praeger ordered them to take off immediately anyway. After they did, but then returned to the airfield shortly and parked their plane, saying it was too dangerous to fly. Praeger immediately fired them, although they were rehired two months later.

In September 1920, under Praeger's guidance, the Post Office Department established the first transcontinental air mail route in the United States. However, the United States lacked a system of lighted navigation beacons, making it too dangerous for air mail pilots to fly at night, and trains carried the mail along the route during the hours of darkness. As a result, transcontinental air mail was not much faster – and considerably more expensive – than transcontinental mail service entirely by train. Praeger understood the dangers of night flying, but wanted to demonstrate its feasibility before President Warren G. Harding took office and appointed his successor. He therefore staged a set of experimental day-and-night mail flights between New York City and San Francisco, California – two eastbound and two westbound – in February 1921. Not a pilot and, as a native of Texas, unfamiliar with winter weather in the northern and western United States, Praeger probably did not fully understand the danger the flights posed to his pilots.