Bye Bye National Airlines

[Guest]

Well it appears as though the final nail has been hammered into National Airlines Coffin.Another sign that there are just to many TINBIRDS up in the sky and not enough of us to fill them.Maybe repealing Deregulation to a case by case basis wouldnt be such a bad idea....my thoughts are if a airline isnt making $$$$ after a certian period of time they should discontinue flying it. http://www.flightsimnetwork.com/dcforum/Us...9d503cc53ab.jpg

[Guest]

One less Airline for Project AI..

[Guest]

Must be some North American airline? Hmmm... Me who has never gone outside Asia Pacific has never heard of National AirlinesKitty MercuryCathay Pacific Virtual Pilot (CX252)

[Guest]

yeah. i worked on the last flight into EWR last night. it was supposed to go out fully loaded so you can imagine the smiles on our faces when we found out they shutdown and didnt have to load all those bags!..lol.came in fully loaded with cargo tho. lots and lots of hot wheel cars. seriously!. just in time for the holidays..lolsad to see them go. i really like theyre crews. always fun to be around them.im not sure where they were losing money tho. atleast not out of EWR. they were usually going out loaded.oh yeah. for those who didnt know about national airlines. its a US based airport. doesnt have any international flights. was based in Las Vegas.

[Guest Dean]

Too bad, I liked flying them. The had new A/C and provided first class service throughout at bargain prices. The original National Airlines was an east coast airline that went out of business a long time ago and the name was bought by a company that was owned by several Las Vegas casinos. They're business model was to provide transportation between a handfull of major US cities and Las Vegas with Vegas as the hub.

[Guest]

you hate to see another fold. i'm planning to go to Fla early next month and usually use US air right here at KITH[ to PBI] so darn handy, but, now, ... do i give them my money and hope, or try gettin' to SYR. what a pain in the arse.[ yeah, i know, its a lot more pain for the ex employees.] tom t

[Guest]

Hmmm. Tried going to http://www.nationalairlines.com and it is telling me nothing... There are probably many more US airlines I have never heard of. How wide was its network?Kitty MercuryCathay Pacific Virtual Pilot (CX252)

[ChrisJake 0]

they were based in Las Vegas. from memory, they served LAX, SFO, SEA, RNO, DFW, ORD, MDW, PHL, MIA, EWR, JFK, DCA and maybe more. strictly 757's.chris

[01pewterz28 117]

Like Chris said they are Las Vegas based backed by 3 HotelCasinos (to get them started) but the cash stopped flowing in from HotelCasinos in 1999. The other city they operated to was Reno, NV.It's sad to see them go they were a nice airline I flew them one time the service was very good, they operated new planes the 757-200 and in the route system worked. When National started the whole goal was to add more seats to Las Vegas. Vegas has many flights a day but if you look at Vegas 75% of the flights operating in and out of McCarran are 737's, MD-80's the airlines choose not to offer many wide body equipment into Vegas.United back in the winter of 1999 operated 747-400's from ORD-LAS and checking back on those load factors the B400 flights were running at 97.3% capacity.So the hotelcasinos who offered up the starting capital for National figured that having a home town airline, and 184 seat 757's would bring more people in and it did. The problem was that the financial backers (hotelcasinos) do not like to lose money and you just do not turn a profit overnight. So the funds were cut off before National could turn a profit. While they did make money at times it was just not enough to keep it going.Before 9/11 National was scheduled to emerge from Chapter 11 in the late 2001 early 2002. When 911 hit 3 days of no operations, a major drop off in travel, and the new security costs hurt National to a point where it was a risk for companies to offer backing to National.The big slap in the face was when the ATSB turned National down twice (thus killing any hopes for a company to offer financing to this airline) for the only reason that they see them as a risk. Well so is US Airways even a larger risk than National. Nothing they could do the sad part is that travel to Las Vegas is the best it has been in 15 years people are flocking to Sin City in hords. I have a feeling that we will see another partner step in and offer cash to start National back up in the next 2-10 months.So long "Red Rock" for now Johnualfan@msn.com

http://www.flagball.com/~jthomas/dfsig02f.jpg

[brucek 38]

Hi John,Delta had expressed interest in taking some of the B752's of National, but lost thid interest recently. Who knows what will happen now.By the way- is that KDEN 16 in your sig?Bruce.

[01pewterz28 117]

>Hi John, >>Delta had expressed interest in taking some of the B752's of >National, but lost thid interest recently. Who knows what >will happen now. >>By the way- is that KDEN 16 in your sig? >>Bruce. RW 7 onboard a United A320 :)Johnualfan@msn.com

http://www.flagball.com/~jthomas/dfsig02f.jpg