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John_Cillis

Airlines that no longer exist--interesting

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Here are a couple probably no one else has flown: TransTexas and Colgan Airways. I had millions of miles on Pan Am and still miss that great airline. Just a month before they shut down, I was on a flight Moscow - Frankfurt - Dulles. On the FRA-IAD leg there were 12 of us total in cabin and biz class. I don't recall how many cabin crew but probably more than paying pax.

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Midwest Airlines - The Best Care in the Air!  I used to work for them too!  Rumor has it, they are coming back!


Regards,

 

Kevin LaMal

"Facts Don't Care About Your Feelings" - Shapiro2024

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And, yes, United still exists.


Regards,

 

Kevin LaMal

"Facts Don't Care About Your Feelings" - Shapiro2024

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2 hours ago, Cactus521 said:

I have flown on many airlines that no longer exist, more of them than current airlines.  TWA, USAirways, Continental, Northwest Airlines, PSA, Aircal, ATA, British Caledonian, TransInternational, Avensa, Mexicana, Taesa, and some more.  What about other simmers?  In 2014 I worked on a contract for American Airlines doing IT testing for their merger with US Airways, specifically their crew scheduling software, which is my contribution to the aviation industry, something I long sought working in customer service from college onward.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/former-airlines/index.html

John

So it was you!? LOL, that software is the devil! 🙂

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Forgot to mention National Airlines, flew the NE corridor. Not sure who bought them out.

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13 minutes ago, overspeed3 said:

Who remembers People Express and cheap tickets from the early 80's?  I flew several times on their 747's from NYC to LA and back:  You actually bought and paid for your ticket while the plane was already airborne!  I think there was another short-lived venture with a different name, same scheme...  

What a memory, I remember them.  But the cheapest airfare I ever paid was $444 roundtrip from SFO to Frankfurt on American Airlines, which got me to Europe after the stock market crash of 1987.  My Mom could not believe I scored such a low airfare, with Eurail Pass and hotels my two weeks spent in Europe in November of 87 cost me only $1000 with Rick Steve's book on Europe in my suitcase, my first of three solo trips I took there from 87-91.

Cheapest airfares I paid between SFO and Reno were AirCal's Happy Hops, where for $129 single supplement I could fly roundtrip, stay two nights at Harrahs or the Hilton, and see a cocktail show like Ronnie Milsap, a great country singer.  Aircal basically ate the airfare or Harrah's subsidized it to get gamblers to Reno.  I later worked for Harrah's and so did my brother, I was Non Gaming Accounting manager for Harrah's Tahoe and Reno and my brother was a bartender there, though not at the same time.

I even went on Harrah's Tahoe Yacht with my boss and accounting team which was a thrill for all of us, before I left Harrah's to become a hotel business systems instructor and road warrior.  Harrah's changed my life and was part of my life, while it was owned by Bass/Holiday Inn.  They worked with Aircal to bring us tourists to Reno where me and my two brothers were married. 

Reno I always preferred over Vegas due to its Alpine location near Tahoe and closeness to Virginia City and the beautiful Minden Gardnerville area where I lived when working at Harrah's.  I would commute up Kingsbury grade, climbing 4000 feet in my car like an aircraft every day to work, and descending on my way home.  Had to buy studded snow tires to make the trip in winter and my little Sentra Wagon could handle the trip while 4x4's could not, I would pass them at the side of the road, stranded.

John

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12 minutes ago, busdriver said:

So it was you!? LOL, that software is the devil! 🙂

I left before the software was deployed, I only tested the interface using C# test code strapped to the program.  It was the most interesting software testing I ever did outside of the hotel industry which I favored the most.

John

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CP Air, Eastern Provincial Airways and Pacific Western Airlines. All amalgamated into Canadian Airlines and that died about 20 years ago. Absorbed by Air Canada.

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Don't blame for my name, my parents were hippies and met in Woodstock

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Did anyone mention Southern Airways? I flew them to Florida from EWR when I was a small child.

Also, I flew Kiwi International from Midway MDW to EWR a few times back in the 90's.

Cheers, Pete

Edited by psolov

Pete Solov - Lake in the Hills 3CK

and Schaumburg Regional 06C
Proud AOPA Member - PPL 2001
Real World Piper Cherokee Pilot

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Eddie Rickenbacker's Eastern Airlines was a missed airline though I never flew on it.  He helped pioneer Lockheed's aircraft like the Constellation, what a wonderful aircraft, which I flew on once in the 60's from LA to SFO.  Also flew on a Lockheed Electra, a wonderful aircraft in the 60's.  And my first 727 flight was in the 60's, all on PSA.

John

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You could do this all day long with airlines that were absorbed into other airlines or just changed their names. I started in 1979 with Allegheny Airlines. In 1980 we changed our name to US Air. In 1986 we merged with PSA eliminating that name. In 1987 we merged with Piedmont eliminating that one. In 1997 we changed our name from US Air to US Airways. In 2005 we merged with America West and kept the US Airways name. In 2015 we merged with American Airlines and the US Airways name was gone. The names go away but the history stays with the employees forever, no matter what their uniforms say.


NAX669.png

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Hello all,

Looks as if America is the only country with dead airlines ... what a history lol.

For Australia

MMA Macrobertson Miller Airlines. (I think almost exclusively in WA from Perth ... stopping all stations lol ... up the coast to Darwin)

Ansett Airlines is probably the most famous collapse here

There were also at least a couple of airlines (Compass and ????) that followed Ansett after trying to fill the void  and then there must be lots and lots of regional airlines as well.

Indonesia

Among the many is Paradise Air whose main route was Denpasar (Bali) to Perth. They claimed a huge number of Australian Expats when they collapsed without any warning. 

I also believe that Indonesia currently has 52, I repeat 52 commercial airlines operating at the moment and I would guess that a few of them are not very viable and will join the defunct list in the future.

The interesting thing is the huge number of differing reasons for the collapses of airlines throughout the world, ie, crashes, fuel costs, inefficiences etc. There have probably been more airline collapses than Wallmart department stores and it certainly cannot really claim to be the most stable of industries and yet it is an industry that the world cannot do without. Can anybody imagine a world without Airlines or airliners.

Regards

Tony

 

 

 


Tony Chilcott.

 

My System. Motherboard. ASRock Taichi X570 CPU Ryzen 9 3900x (not yet overclocked). RAM 32gb Corsair Vengeance (2x16) 3200mhz. 1 x Gigabyte Aorus GTX1080ti Extreme and a 1200watt PSU.

1 x 1tb SSD 3 x 240BG SSD and 4 x 2TB HDD

OS Win 10 Pro 64bit. Simulators ... FS2004/P3Dv4.5/Xplane.DCS/Aeroflyfs2...MSFS to come for sure.

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Anyone remember the old Southern Airlines? Flew several trips on their Dc9's and oh those bueatiful Martin 404 Aristocrats. Used to ride those out of Dothan when I was at Ft. Rucker. Then there was Texas International. Took Fam trips on both those when I was with the FAA . Seemed those smaller companies had a much more laid back and cordial atmosphere then the big guys.

To be fair Delta gave me a couple of nice Fam trips as well. They were nice folks but a little more formal.

I'm currently reading Southern Storm about the tragic crash of Southern 242 in New Hope GA.

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Vic green

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In Napa we had a short lived airline, STOL Air Commuter, which flew to SFO.  Ground transportation, Evans Airport Bus Service, put it out of business, it never had a chance due to the cheap fares to SFO in those days.  I met the owners of STOL Air Commuter when I toured Europe in 1982. their father was captain of our TWA flight home from Frankfurt that year, I got to shake his hand as I departed the aircraft at JFK.  Napa's Airport was often suggested as a reliever commercial airport in the North Bay, but local activists protested saying they wanted no jet traffic.  I thought that was so hilarious because we already had aircraft up to the size of a 737 or DC9 coming in as private jets into Napa in those days, even a 747 landed and took off from there once, I heard it on my scanner.  And we had C5's from Travis overhead anyway, but people buried their heads in the sand in those days and feared progress.  Napa's airport has remained a jet center for jets up to an MD 80 and 737 Biz jet.  It was and is a busy airport servicing the businesses that make the wine country popular, and the movie industry up there.  Airliners.net shows many jets there.  Maybe one day airline service will go in there between Napa and LAX or SLC, who knows?

John

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stol_Air_Commuter

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