Trans World Airlines (TWA) was an American airline that existed from 1925 until it was bought out by and merged with American Airlines in 2001. It was a major domestic airline in the United States and the main U.S.-based competitor of Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) on intercontinental routes from 1946 until deregulation in the late 1970s. TWA had hubs at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, John F. Kennedy International Airport, and Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport for much of its history. Focus cities also existed at various times in Kansas City, Los Angeles, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. In the 1980s it built up a hub in Atlanta, an operation which was reduced in the 1990s.

Flying to most major U.S. cities, TWA was one of the largest domestic airlines; before deregulation TWA, American Airlines, United Airlines, and Eastern Air Lines were collectively known as the "Big Four". It also had a substantial feeder operation from smaller cities in the Midwestern United States. Beyond the U.S., TWA had a large European and Middle Eastern network, served mainly from its hub, the iconic TWA Flight Center, at John F. Kennedy International Airport. For a few years its routes circumnavigated the globe. Along with Pan Am, it was considered to be a secondary unofficial flag carrier for the United States, especially after Pan Am was dissolved in the early 1990s.

Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world. He gained prominence from the late 1920s as a maverick film producer, making big-budget and often controversial films like The Racket (1928), Hell's Angels (1930), Scarface (1932), and The Outlaw (1943). Hughes was one of the most influential aviators in history; he set multiple world air-speed records, built the Hughes H-1 Racer and H-4 "Hercules" (better known to history as the "Spruce Goose" aircraft), and acquired and expanded Trans World Airlines which would later on merge with American Airlines. Hughes is also remembered for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle in later life, caused in part by a worsening obsessive–compulsive disorder and chronic pain. His legacy is maintained through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Hughes' birthplace is recorded as either Humble or Houston, Texas. The date is also uncertain, though Hughes claimed his birthday was Christmas Eve. A 1941 affidavit birth certificate of Hughes signed by his aunt Annette Gano Lummis and Estelle Boughton Sharp states he was born on December 24, 1905, in Harris County, Texas. However, his baptismal record of October 7, 1906, in the parish register of St. John's Episcopal Church, in Keokuk, Iowa, has his birth listed as September 24, 1905, without reference to the place of birth.