The Ford Tri-Motor, the Tin Goose, and the Corrugated Airliner That Still Sells Rides on the Oshkosh Flightline

The Ford Tri-Motor, nicknamed the “Tin Goose,” is a three-engine airliner introduced by Henry Ford in 1926 and built from corrugated aluminum. It was the airplane that convinced ordinary Americans to trust flying - and nearly a century later, you can still buy a seat on an airworthy example at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh and other airports around the country.

What Is the Ford Tri-Motor?

The Ford Tri-Motor is a high-wing, three-engine airliner that first appeared in 1926. The versions most people remember are the 4-AT and the 5-AT. One engine sits on the nose, and two more hang beneath the wings, close enough that window-seat passengers can nearly reach the exhaust stacks.

The most striking feature is the skin. It’s corrugated aluminum - ridge after ridge running the length of the fuselage and out along the wing. Run your hand across it and it feels like a barn roof or an old washboard.

Henry Ford, the man who put America on wheels with the Model T, wanted an airplane built like one of his cars: safe, reliable, and trustworthy enough for ordinary people. The Tri-Motor was his answer.

Why Is the Ford Tri-Motor Skin Corrugated?

The corrugation came from a German designer named Hugo Junkers, who discovered that folding metal into ridges made it far stronger without adding much weight. The result was an airframe that was stiff, rugged, and nearly indestructible by 1920s standards.

That strength came at a cost: speed. All those ridges catch the air and create drag, so the Tin Goose cruised at only about 90 miles per hour in favorable wind. But Ford wasn’t selling speed. He was selling trust, and the heavy corrugated aluminum told a nervous passenger in 1928 that the airplane was not going to fall apart in the air.

What Was It Like to Fly on a Ford Tri-Motor?

The first thing passengers noticed was the size - a big airplane for its era, with a boxy body and that third engine jutting from the nose. You ducked through a small door and stepped up into a cabin whose floor sloped toward the front, because the airplane sits nose-high on a tailwheel.

Inside were woven wicker seats, one row down each side, carrying roughly eight to ten passengers. A small curtain separated the cabin from the two pilots.

When the three engines fired up one at a time, the whole airframe shook. There was essentially no soundproofing, and conversation was nearly impossible. On some early airlines the stewardess - a job the Tri-Motor helped invent - handed out chewing gum for your ears and cotton to stuff in them, along with a card to write down questions you couldn’t shout loud enough to ask. Smoking was allowed, so the cabin smelled of hot oil, avgas, leather, and cigarettes.

Why the Ford Tri-Motor Mattered in Aviation History

The Tin Goose took flying away from daredevils and barnstormers and handed it to everyone else. For the price of a train ticket and a bit more, an ordinary person could watch the checkerboard of America slide by below.

Transcontinental Air Transport - an airline that would eventually become part of Trans World Airlines (TWA) - built a coast-to-coast service around the Ford Tri-Motor. In 1929, just two years after his solo Atlantic crossing, Charles Lindbergh was hired as a consultant to help design the route.

Crossing the country then was a hybrid affair. Because it wasn’t safe to fly over the Rockies at night, passengers rode the Tri-Motor by day and boarded a train overnight. The full airplane-train-airplane journey took about 48 hours - two days for a trip that now takes roughly 5.5 hours nonstop. In 1929, that was a miracle.

The airplane also went to the ends of the earth. Admiral Richard Byrd used a Ford Tri-Motor to fly over the South Pole in 1929. That aircraft, the Floyd Bennett, is still preserved today.

What Happened to the Ford Tri-Motor?

Ford built fewer than 200 Tri-Motors before production ended in 1933. The Great Depression cut demand, and sleeker, faster designs - the Boeing 247 and then the Douglas DC-3 - made the corrugated Ford look like exactly what it was: a first draft. The smooth, fast, comfortable DC-3 buried the Tin Goose commercially.

But an airplane built like a tank doesn’t disappear. The Tri-Motor kept working for decades - flying for airlines and the Army, hauling cargo, dusting crops, and dropping smokejumpers onto Western forest fires well into the 1960s. Its ability to get in and out of short, rough strips kept it useful long after more modern aircraft would have been grounded.

Can You Still Ride in a Ford Tri-Motor Today?

Yes. The Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) keeps airworthy Ford Tri-Motors flying and sells rides in them - at AirVenture Oshkosh each July and at small airports across the country the rest of the year.

You can walk up, buy a ticket, and climb aboard a genuine Ford Tri-Motor: duck through the little door, settle into a seat, feel three radial engines shake the airframe, and go flying in an airplane that first carried passengers when Calvin Coolidge was in the White House.

One of the EAA’s Tri-Motors came to the organization as a wreck. Over a long career it had been an airliner, a freighter, and a smokejumper platform before a thunderstorm flipped and mangled it on the ground. A small army of volunteers spent years rebuilding it - riveting new corrugated skin, overhauling the engines, and turning a pile of bent aluminum back into a flying airplane. Today their grandchildren can buy a ticket and ride in it.

That is the appeal of experiencing the Tin Goose at Oshkosh: this isn’t a replica or a museum piece behind glass. It’s the real airplane Henry Ford built to make America trust flying, still doing exactly what it was designed to do - carrying passengers, engines running and aluminum humming under your hand.

Key Takeaways

• The Ford Tri-Motor, or “Tin Goose,” was introduced in 1926 and built from corrugated aluminum, a strengthening technique borrowed from German designer Hugo Junkers.
• It was slow (about 90 mph) but rugged, carrying 8–10 passengers in wicker seats; Henry Ford designed it to make ordinary Americans trust flying.
• Charles Lindbergh helped design a coast-to-coast Tri-Motor route in 1929, and a Tri-Motor flew over the South Pole with Admiral Byrd that same year.
• Fewer than 200 were built before production ended in 1933, when the Douglas DC-3 rendered it obsolete - but it kept flying cargo and smokejumper missions into the 1960s.
• The EAA still flies airworthy Ford Tri-Motors and sells rides at Oshkosh and other airports, letting the public experience 1920s air travel firsthand.