After finishing his last flight, retiring as a Boeing 787 captain for American Airlines, Gregory Acuña posted a photograph of himself on Facebook, wearing the same blue flight jacket he wore more than 50 years earlier as a teen member of Explorer Post 1011, a local group for young aviation buffs sponsored by San Diego-based Pacific Southwest Airlines.
Among those who saw the photograph was retired American Airlines passenger service manager Pat McCollam, who recognized the jacket from his days as a Post 1011 Explorer scout.
“So many of us launched our aviation careers from Post 1011 at Montgomery Air Field,” said McCollam.
That jacket and the memories started a conversation between the two men and many others. Their stories turned into a nearly 500-page commemorative book celebrating the people who made Pacific Southwest Airlines what it was. “Catching Those Smiles: Our Story with PSA” will have its public debut in September at the Air & Space Museum.
Catching those Smiles authors and contributors, from left, Laura Crivello, Pat McCollam, David Alexander, Pearl Padovano, Betsy Bogle and Greg Acuña at the San Diego Air and Space Museum in front of the PSA exhibit, 2026. Courtesy of Greg Acuna.
“We realized we weren’t simply preserving the history of an airline. We were preserving the stories of the people who made PSA such a special place to work,” said Acuña, whose father was a pilot for Pacific Southwest Airlines from the 1960s to 1980s.
Over three years, beginning in 2023, Acuña and a team of Pacific Southwest Airline buffs interviewed hundreds of former PSA employees — pilots, mechanics, flight attendants, ticket agents and their families. They gathered more than 1,200 historic photographs and countless personal stories at Pacific Southwest Airlines reunions and other gatherings.
HIstoric photo of Pacific Southwest Airlines showing the iconic smile on the plane’s nose. Courtesy of David Alexander.
“The result is not a traditional airline history,” said Acuña, who is also the author of spy and Cold War thrillers. It is a collection of firsthand memories told by the people who lived them at PSA: stories of friendship, practical jokes, family picnics at De Anza Cove and Crown Point, basketball and ski teams, unforgettable flights, travels abroad and a workplace that employees still describe as a family decades after the airline’s final flight.
“We wanted to preserved the stories before the people who could tell them were gone,” said Acuña, whose co-authors include McCollam; Pearl Padovano, who began her career with PSA and is a flight attendant for American Airlines; David Alexander, retired US Airways and former PSA flight attendant; Laura Crivello, former PSA flight attendant; and Betsy Bogle, former PSA flight operations assistant and daughter of longtime PSA chief pilot Captain Mike Bogle.
Group photo from a flight of the Eagles Explorer Post 1011 in the early 1970s. Courtesy of Capt. Tony Claessens.
Pacific Southwest Airlines, cofounded by Kenny Friedkin and J. Floyd Andrews, grew out of Friedkin Aeronautics, a local flight school based in Lindbergh Field. In 1949 Friedkin started weekly flights from San Diego to Oakland, with a stop in Burbank. The airline operated mostly within California until 1988.
It was known as “The World’s Friendliest Airline” and its slogan was “Catch our Smile.” The airline was acquired in 1987 by US Air, which later merged with American Airlines.
“The book weaves personal journeys with the broader evolution of aviation over many decades in San Diego,” said Acuña. “Many of those stories reveal the personality that made PSA famous.”
The story behind the smile on the nose of the airplane goes back to the late 1960s and early 1970s. As part of an advertising campaign, a smile was painted on the nose of one plane. Phone calls and fan letters flooded in — the public loved it. So the smile was painted across the entire fleet.
The story of longtime Captain Mike Bogle includes a bit about his entertaining passengers by singing over the public-address system, songs like “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” as his plane approached the Bay Area.
The story of Captain Tony Claessens is about a PSA pilot and mentor, who inspired hundreds of young aviation buffs to become pilots. He was known for handing out lollipops to children who were invited to tour the cockpit. Claessens had said, “It was in keeping with the family spirit of the airline.”
Claessens founded Aviation Explorer Post 1011 after persuading PSA president J. Floyd Andrews to support a youth aviation scouting program in San Diego. That program became the launching point for countless aviation careers.
Several new Eagle Scouts look over aviation charts with California Congressman Lionel Van Deerlin and discuss the Flight of the Eagles. Courtesy of Capt. Tony Claessens
PSA flight engineer David Narvestad’s story includes a poem he wrote, “Night Shift:” “…Checking and changing part after part large and small problems taken to heart…”
The book highlights stories from every department of the airline.
Padovano shares her journey from local Aviation Explorer Post 2-727, fondly known as the Mini-Stews, to achieving her dream of becoming a PSA flight attendant. At first she was turned down by the airline, but she refused to give up.
“I hope my story reminds young people that sometimes your first ‘no’ isn’t the end of your dream, it’s the beginning,” Padovano said.
For Betsy Bogle and her sister Lucy Bogle, PSA wasn’t simply where their father worked. It was home. It was family. That sentiment runs throughout the book. Lucy remembers playing inside PSA’s original wooden hangar at Lindbergh Field and being babysat by the family of airline founder Kenny Friedkin.
“We didn’t write this book to remember airplanes,” Acuña said. “We wrote it to remember the people. The airplanes were remarkable. But it was the people who gave PSA its smile.”
The book’s public launch is from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 23 at the San Diego Air and Space Museum. The commemorative Heritage Launch Edition will be sold during the event and readers can meet the authors and have copies signed.
Visit https://gmacuna.com/products/catching-those-smiles-our-story-with-psa?discount=GREGPSA to purchase the book.