Air Missouri: The Kirksville Airline Started by a Local Dentist

Kirksville once had an airline based in the city.

The surviving record is clear that Air Missouri operated as a Kirksville-based commuter carrier in the late 1970s and grew out of an earlier operation called Horizon Airways.

The record becomes less tidy when we ask who exactly founded Horizon and what year it began.

Air Missouri grew out of Horizon Airways

The Museum of Flight Archives describes Air Missouri as a commuter airline based in Kirksville and says it originated as Horizon Airways.

Its archival summary places Air Missouri operations in 1976–1978 and identifies service involving:

• Kirksville;
• Kansas City;
• St. Louis.

That gives the renamed airline a useful basic outline without requiring reconstructed schedules or route maps that have not yet been verified.

Horizon existed before Air Missouri

A June 15, 1973 Federal Register notice identifies:

Dr. Arnold S. Barber, d.b.a. Horizon Airways, Inc., Kirksville

in an aeronautical advisory-station proceeding.

Federal aviation directories from the 1970s also list Horizon Airways at Clarence Cannon Memorial Airport in Kirksville.

Those records establish that Horizon was an operating aviation business before the Air Missouri name appeared in 1976.

That matters because it rules out a simplified story in which Air Missouri suddenly came into existence only after another carrier left Kirksville.

The dentist-founder story has a name problem

Later Kirksville and airport histories commonly describe the airline as having been started by a local dentist and often identify him as Dr. Stephen Barber.

The 1973 federal record instead names Dr. Arnold S. Barber in direct connection with Horizon Airways.

The current evidence does not establish whether:

• Arnold and Stephen Barber were different people with different roles;
• a later source repeated the wrong first name;
• ownership or management changed;
• another family or corporate relationship explains both names.

So the responsible version of the story keeps that conflict visible.

A Dr. Barber is directly documented in federal records. The exact founder identity still needs period corporate or newspaper evidence.

The starting year also conflicts

The Museum of Flight archival description traces Horizon Airways to 1969.

Later local histories commonly give 1972.

Both dates should be treated as leads rather than silently choosing whichever creates the cleanest narrative.

A period incorporation record, launch advertisement or Civil Aeronautics Board record would be stronger evidence.

Horizon predates Ozark's 1976 departure

Kirksville's commercial air-service history changed substantially in the 1970s, including the end of Ozark Air Lines service in 1976.

But Horizon demonstrably existed by 1973.

That means the chronology is not:

Ozark leaves → local airline is invented

A more defensible sequence is:

Horizon already exists → Kirksville's airline market changes → Air Missouri emerges as the later commuter-airline identity

The exact business decisions behind that transition still need period records.

What remains to be recovered

Several details should not be filled in from memory or generic aviation history:

• exact Horizon founding date;
• founder identity and ownership structure;
• Air Missouri rename date;
• complete route schedule;
• aircraft types and fleet size;
• exact shutdown date and cause.

Those belong in timetables, corporate records, advertisements and federal filings.

What the evidence already proves

Kirksville was not merely a destination on somebody else's route map.

For a brief period, it was the home base of a commuter airline operation with roots in a local Horizon Airways business and documented connections to Kansas City and St. Louis.

The awkward founder and date conflicts are not defects in that history.

They are part of the surviving record—and better preserved than "fixed" by guesswork.