North Central began a period of rapid route development which would transform this airline into the number one local service carrier by the end of the year.

President Hal Carr and his team aggressively filed for new routes with the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) and received one such award for service along what was known as Route 7. Starting May 1st, this would allow North Central to connect Chicago with its new eastern terminus of Detroit through the cities of South Bend, Indiana and Kalamazoo, Battle Creek and Jackson Michigan. This route was formerly flown by American Airlines which kept its authority to continue non-stop service between Detroit and Chicago. This kind of award would be repeated many times with North Central and the other local service carriers as the major trunk airlines shed their thinner routes to concentrate on the higher density markets.

North Central also inaugurated service to Detroit's City Airport on June 1st. This unique idea provided through flight / same aircraft service from routes going to North Central's main Detroit operation at Willow Run Airport. These flights then allowed passengers an option of continuing from the Chicago routes or Michigan's Upper Peninsula stations to proceed on to Detroit's "closer to downtown" airport.

Eighteen DC-3s continued to fly the "Route of the Northliners" with the upgrade to the fleet completed, enhancing the interior along with increased carry-on baggage capability and an increase in passenger capacity from 21 to 26. The fleet was also used significantly more from the previous year with an increase of 23% miles flown.

At the end of the year, North Central was first in passengers, mail and freight among the country's feeder airlines and became known as "America's Leading Local Service Carrier"