We covered 10 great airlines of the past. We decided to add a bonus round for our readers after receiving so much feedback.
If you missed the first part, you should be fine. The link is here.
The History Special is about 10 major airlines of the past.
CPAIR is a Canadian airline.
Canada is a medium-sized country with a lot of landmass, but barely enough people to support two major airlines. Air Canada has always been the dominant carrier, but from the 1970s until the 2000s, there was a worthy competitor in the shape of Canadian Pacific Air Lines, which was known as Canadian Airlines.
Canadian Pacific bought a few bush airlines in the 1940s, and by the early 1950s it was flying propliners from Vancouver to Tokyo, Hong Kong, Honolulu, Fiji and Australia, as well as a polar route to Europe. Canadian Pacific had a plan to operate a pure jet service from Australia to Honolulu via Canton Island, but the leg was too long for the de Havilland Comet. The ambitious plan to have the first Canadian Pacific's comet fly from the factory in Hatfield UK to Australia was scrapped after it crashed on takeoff in Karachi.
The orange livery of the airline made it famous around the world. The interiors of the Douglas DC-8 and DC-10 jets were unique and made for a stylish twist on the experience. Debts mounted as competition increased.
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The new entity was called Canadian Airlines after the sale of CP Air in 1987. The last letter of the name became an arrowhead in order to appease Francophone Canadians.
Canadian took over Wardair in 1989 and within a year it was flying 12 million passengers a year to 160 destinations in 17 countries on five continents and was a founding member of the one. It was the first airline to have a website.
The late 1990s slowdown of the Asian economies meant these routes were becoming less profitable, which led to codesharing with American Airlines to create a hub in Vancouver.
Canadian was bought by Air Canada on the first day of 2001 despite attempts to find a partner or expand American Airlines investment. Air Canada sold 14 DC-10s and integrated 13 A320s, 23 Boeing and four Boeing Some of the 43-200s were painted in Air Canada livery for a short time.
Canada has not had a second global airline since the Covid 19 outbreak, although domestic low cost giant WestJet started flying to Europe with second hand It will be interesting to see if WestJet follows in the footsteps of Canadian Pacific.
VARIG is a character from the movie "Vig".
German industrialists formed Brazil's flag carrier in 1927 with a flying boat. After World War 2 ended in 1945, Ruben Martin Berta became managing director and started making big plans for the airline, starting with the standardisation of the motley fleet around one type, the L-188 Electra twin engined prop.
After a decade of domestic and regional service, Varig started flying to New York with Super Constellation propliners, marking a change in the culture of the airline. The Jet Age began in Brazil in December 1959 with the introduction of la belle Caravelle on the New York run with stops in Belem, Trinidad and Nassau due to its short range. In 1960, the Caravelles were limited to domestic and regional flights and New York was taken over by Rolls-Royce powered Boeing 707s which could make the trip nonstop.
The takeover of Panair do Brasil by Pan Am in 1965, which also included a route from Los Angeles to Japan, may seem surprising.
The 1970s saw the retirement of old and thirsty aircraft, replaced by widebody aircraft, and the consolidation of routes and management structure. The country transitioned from military rule to democracy in 1985 and the deregulation of the industry allowed competitors such as VASP and Transbrasil. The airline joined Star Alliance and a new livery was introduced, but without the blue cheatline and with a bland white fuselage and generic logo on the tail.
In 2001, the low cost operator in the Southwest/Ryanair style began flying in Brazil. For the first time since 1961, Varig was knocked off the top spot in domestic marketshare. The cargo division and the maintenance facilities were sold to a group of investors.
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There is a link to the "Bif-NvBl8R" page on the website.
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The old Varig absorbed all of the debts and the new Varig was formed with the famous brand intact but shorn of it.
Gol bought the new Varig to run it as an international arm of their mostly domestic business, but the brand differentiation didn't mean much as the aircraft became all-economy. The holding company for the new Varig was put into bankruptcy in 2010 after all of its flights had Gol flight numbers. The advancement of air travel in its early and middle years was aided by the Monolithic ships of state like Varig, but now with the deregulation of heavier-than-air flight, institutions with the scale and payroll of a national bank are no longer needed. It is a shame to see such powerful expressions of national pride like Varig disappear as low cost carriers might make more sense in today's world.
PeopleXPress
Every airline in the US had to have a route licence for every route, which included when they could fly, what kind of aircraft they could use, and what kind of food they could serve. As the industry matured, it was seen as a barrier to competition and consumer choice and the whole thing was deregulated. Anyone could fly wherever they wanted and charge whatever they wanted. FAA rules concerning safety were the only regulation that applied.
While the incumbent majors had the most to lose, and proceeded with caution, a number of start-ups seized the opportunity of a level playing field, and one of them was People Express, founded by Donald Burr, a big fan of British maverick Freddie Laker.
People Express bought secondhand 727-200s from Alitalia and Braniff. Newark's north terminal was chosen as the base for flights to Buffalo, Columbus and Norfolk. The Newark hub had 42 departures a day by December and in May 1983 it opened up a new route to London with the addition of a small fleet of secondhand jumbo jets from Alitalia and Braniff. The London flight was an immediate sell out, and even gave rise to Virgin Atlantic, because of the cheap fares.
People Express did more than innovate with low fares. It had a unique corporate structure where people did different jobs, including captains working check in and upper management cleaning planes. It was the first US airline to charge for checked bags and food.
The airline was flying high, but 1985 brought too much expansion too soon. jumbo jet service from Newark to London, Los Angeles and Oakland was made possible by the expansion of the fleet. The acquisition of Denver-based Frontier Airlines was enough to make it bite off. The original Frontier was an old school regional carrier with a fleet of 60 jets that flew to 94 destinations in the west. Frontier was not a good fit for buccaneering people, despite the odd unconventional move of employing the only black Americans who flew in combat in World War 2 to be hired by a major and the first female pilot at a US major. It had a first class cabin, high wages, a sclerotic corporate structure, and union representation, who had just had a fight with Frontier management over a non-union subsidiary. The cost of the expansion dragged down People Express, which was bought by Texas International and folded into Continental Airlines.
The experiment had failed due to overambitious expansion but People Express left a powerful legacy, with its low cost and buy-on-board business model established, and the viability of Newark which had previously been overshadowed by La Guardia and Kennedy in the perception of New Yorkers. United took over Continental in 2010 and the Newark hub became the gateway to the world. The Simpsons had a shout-out to People Express in a scene where Homer describes 1985 as the year that People Express introduced a generation of hicks to air travel.
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America West.
America West was a start-up that started in the style of People Express, with 11 Boeing scrulls based in Phoenix, and 13 destinations from the first day. The fleet grew to 21 ships by 1984. America West was so confident in its management of future growth and prosperity that by 1986 it played a major role in the expansion of facilities at Phoenix Sky Harbor airport.
America West followed in the footsteps of the classic start-up style with cross- utilization of workers, but in other ways deviated from it, most notably by having a first class product across the fleet and offering full service in the economy. One way it mimicked its peers was by expanding fast and getting into a lot of debt, partly because Ansett Australia bought 26% of America West and leased their jets to fly within Australia during the pilots strike.
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America West acquired four Boeing 757s from KLM in 1989 to start flights from Phoenix to Sydney, but the route application was denied. Instead, the jumbos were used to fly from Phoenix to Las Vegas, Honolulu, and Nagoya in Japan. Phoenix and Las Vegas had more departures than any other city by this point.
America West was able to continue trading despite the fact that it had lost money and filed for Chapter 11 protection in 1991 because of the rules of the US bankruptcy code which allowed the company to continue trading. The old, empty, and frequently delayed jumbo jets were parked. The network was smaller. America West emerged from bankruptcy protection after three years, with Mesa Airlines and Continental Airlines forming codeshare agreements. The old TWA Ambassadors Club became an America West lounge when it was opened as a midwest hub. It spent the rest of the decade in the market.
America West took over US Airways in 2005. The US Airways name stayed because the merged carrier spanned the entire country and Europe with no particular geographic emphasis. The signs that showed which airline was the dominant parner remained, most notably in the merged airline retaining the callsign Cactus systemwide, which was the scene of Captain Sully's famous ditching of an A320 after a bird strike over New York. It was known as the Miracle On The Hudson, but to air traffic control it was called Cactus 1549.
The world's biggest airline was created when US Airways and American Airlines merged. The last element of America West to survive was the callsign, but America West was able to navigate the pitfalls of a turbulent industry and go out on top. Excellent!
FLYBE.
Jersey European Airways was formed in 1979 to fly from the Channel Islands to the British mainland, initially with war-surplus Douglas DC-3 props, but later with propjet Vickers Viscounts. In 1985 the airline carried 200,000 passengers a year around the United Kingdom and 460,000 by 1990.
In 1993 jets arrived in the shape of little four-engined British Aerospace BAe- 146s, which were used throughout the UK, including across the Irish Sea to Northern Ireland, and out of London Heathrow on behalf of Air France to Toulouse and Lyon. The plans to buy bigger jets, such as the Boeing 737s or the A320s, were never carried out.
In June 2000 it was announced that British European Airways would change its name to better convey the scale of the airline. British Airways' European routes flew under that name until 1974 and probably retained naming rights. An eagerness to establish its own legacy, or to avoid paying the big bucks, led to another name change. FlyBe was the launch customer for the 26 Embraer 195 jets. The airline was involved in a scandal in 2008 when the airport refused to budge when FlyBe had a deal that discounted airport fees assuming a certain number of passengers in the year. FlyBe took to operating flights full of paid actors supplied by extras agencies on trips to Dublin to hit the numbers, which it achieved, but at the cost of considerable reputational harm for both airline and airport.
FlyBe Barra Beach.
A domestic airline of substantial size in a country as geographically small as the United Kingdom was always going to be a challenge, given that the UK is not only small but has expensive rail coverage. New management was brought in after financial losses. Sixty of the airline's 158 routes did not cover their direct operating costs. bases were established at London City, Cardiff, Doncaster, and Southend. Profitability remained elusive despite the introduction of a new purple livery. The British government deferred £20 million in tax obligations, and Virgin Atlantic announced it would acquire FlyBe and rebrand it as Virgin Connect, in a new role feeding the mothership with local connections.
With the advent of the Covid 19 epidemic, FlyBe's request for a £100 million loan from the government was canceled, and the future outlook became so dire that a loan would only postpone the inevitable. The British government withdrew further support for Virgin Atlantic after they spent over a hundred million dollars on their new investment.
On March 20, 2020, FlyBe ceased operations. It was a pity to see the airline close down, and with a perfect safety record, no aircraft have been damaged in service since 1979. It felt like FlyBe was looking for a role that it never found. The world's biggest operator of the type has 54 DHC Dash-8 Q400 turboprops. In the 1990s, some of my first flights were on the BAe-146s, which were a fixture at regional airports in the UK for many years. I was sad to see this case go.
Charles Kennedy's original unknown cover image.
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