Editing Seaboard Air Line Railroad (section)

====The ''air line'' name====
{{Further|Air-line railroad}}
[[Image:Seaboard straight as a plumb line ad.jpg|thumb|300px|right|"Straight as a [[plumb line]]": Seaboard Air Line Railway advertisement illustrating the "quickest train service via the shortest route" to Florida, 1902.]]

In the days before air travel, ''air line'' was a common term for the shortest distance between two points: a straight line drawn through the air (or on a map), ignoring natural obstacles (i.e., "[[as the crow flies]]"). Hence, a number of 19th-century railroads used ''air line'' in their titles to suggest that their routes were shorter than those of competing roads:  see list at [[Air-line railroad]].

The Seaboard never owned an airplane. In 1940 the railroad proposed the creation of "Seaboard Airlines," but this idea was struck down by the [[Interstate Commerce Commission]] as violating federal [[United States antitrust law|anti-trust legislation]].{{citation needed|date = December 2015}}

During a spate of interest in aviation shares on [[Wall Street]] following [[Charles A. Lindbergh]]'s trans-Atlantic flight in 1927, Seaboard Air Line shares actually attracted some investor curiosity because of the name's aviation-related connotations; only after noticing that Seaboard Air Line was actually a railroad did investors lose interest.<ref name='Ross 1968'>{{cite book | last = Ross | first = Walter S. | title = The Last Hero: Charles A. Lindbergh | publisher = Harper & Row | year = 1968 | location = New York | pages = 170–171 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=qwKOfZPn9IYC&q=%22seaboard+air+line%22+stock+lindbergh&pg=PA171 | isbn = 9781419138119}}</ref>