Lost in the coverage of the death President George H.W. Bush last week is another event which is near and dear to the hearts of the former employees of Trans World Airlines. On December 1, 2001, the last flight under the TWA logo was flown after the airlines assets had been acquired by American Airlines earlier that year.
When TWA ceased operations it was, at 76 years, 4 months, and 18 days, the oldest continuously operating airline in our country. It was not the first airline to lose its identity by merger or outright failure, and sadly it wasn’t the last.
When the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter, there were 31 Part 121 Airlines in business in our country. Today, there are 10 which fly 737s or larger, and only 7 of those can be considered major airlines.
Among the spectacular flops of the Carter administration, deregulating the airline industry must rate very near, if not at the top of the list. For a very short period of time, Americans enjoyed lower fares from the so-called “New Entrant” carriers like New York Air and Peoples Express. However, people who lived in smaller towns and cities which had previously been served by the bigger airlines using DC-9s or 737s, found that the “Equivalent Service” promised by the law was not “equivalent” at all.
The several hundred seats available on a couple of DC-9s or 737s per day were replaced by multiple flights of 19 seat Beech 1900s or Swearingen Metroliners. The crews flying for these FAR Part 135 “commuter” airlines were not trained to the standards of FAR Part 121 carriers, and a series of fatal accidents soon ensued as the “Express” airlines blossomed, painted in the livery of the larger airline whose service they attempted to replace. It took years for these airlines to become equipped with “Regional Jet” aircraft in the 60 to 75 seat range and be required to operate under the higher standards of FAR Part 121. Better service, but still not “equivalent” to what passengers had formerly enjoyed.
As the debacle of Jimmy Carters Airline Deregulation Act has filtered down through the last 40 years, many things happened. It has cost hundreds of thousands of good paying airline jobs, and eroded the quality of airline service in America, which was previously the envy of the rest of the planet. We are now faced with the prospect of a possible re-regulation of the airline industry. However, this time it will be with less than one third of the former companies who used to compete with each other to gain customers by the quality of the inflight service and amenities provided. Now, they only competition is on price per ticket, which is much higher per “seat mile” than they were in 1978.
So they won’t be completely forgotten, here is a list of former airlines which comprise an aviation “Ghosts of Christmas Past” list.
They are missed by those of us old enough to remember them.
Aloha
Aspen, America Trans Air,
Brannif, Continental, Eastern
Hughes Air West, Midway, National
North Central, Northeast, Northwest Orient
Ozark, Pan American, Piedmont, PSA, Republic
Southern, TWA, Texas International
Western