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Article overview Description of three defunct airlines gone from boom to bust. They all have a common point: low fares. Originally published in May 1998. Re-edited in December 1999.	flying for pennies by Sergio Ortega Air Florida, New York Air and PEOPLExpress... emember the good old times?", some former airline employees ask between themselves. "Yes of course!"... A large number of airlines have appeared thanks to deregulation in the seventies in the United States and Europe. They offered very low fares for long-haul flights, allowing almost anyone to fly, from the large families to lonely teenagers, seniors... Their story for each one is almost the same: the airline appears and starts as very small. Then, it expands rapidly using larger and larger aircraft and operating longer and longer routes. Their success reaches its paroxysm and suddenly drops because of competition with larger regular airlines, decreasing quality in the field of customer service, labor conflicts, and many other reasons. Finally, the airline is forced to bankruptcy and is bought by a large regular airline or simply merged. Let's take a look at three of those "no-frills" airlines that appeared in the seventies and eighties, as a result of deregulation in the United States. We will concentrate on Air Florida, as it is the airline that is featured in our movie review of this month [at the time of publishing], Flight 90: Disaster on the Potomac. Air Florida Air Florida started its operations in 1972 as a regional airline operating within Florida. In 1978, it becomes a med-size airline and starts flying out of Florida, with its first service MIA-DCA (Miami - Washington National). At the time it operated DC-9s and B737s bearing the classic green and blue livery, the same color palette as its short callsign "Palm", as in "Palmtree"! 1980 is the great year for Air Florida. It starts international service on DC-10s and B727s bound for Central America and Europe. But the success didn't last long, because of a fierce competition with giant Pan Am. Air Florida's popularity and success makes a swift dive as on January 13, 1982, a B737 crashes on the 14th Street Bridge after take-off from Washington National airport. The images of the deadly crash that made more than 70 deaths, are broadcast worldwide and the airline suffers from very bad publicity. The airline's losses are too important, the bad image is harassing the employees and the competition with Pan Am is simply unbearable. July 3rd, 1984 marks the end of Air Florida, as it files for bankruptcy. It is eventually acquired by Midway Airlines and renamed Midway Express. Midway Express is merged later into Midway Airlines. And we know the end of the story: Midway stops operations in 1991 and then comes back four years later, based at Raleigh/Durham, to cease operations in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, reappear... and cease operations under its name once more in 2002. New York Air New York Air starts to fly from New York La Guardia to Washington and Boston in the winter 1980-1981. The operations expand to other cities in the Northeastern coast. But a strike at LGA forces New York Air to install a mini-hub at nearby Newark Airport. 1985 is the year when the airline moves again, this time from Newark to Washington Dulles. There, it starts a vast North-to-South network. At the end of its existence, New York Air and PEOPLExpress are acquired by Texas Air, which is acquired in turn by giant Continental Airlines. The beautiful red B737s, DC-9s and MD-80s were seen in many airports in the Northeastern coast. The apple on the tail and the nickname of New York City, the "Big Apple" gave New York Air its cute callsign: "Apple". The airline's expansion reached the point when it had a communter airline called New York Air Connection. PEOPLExpress PEOPLExpress was created in 1981 by Donald Burr and its philosophy, from the beginning, was to create an employee-owned airline, sort of like a "family". It chose to hub at Newark International Airport and started offering service on second-hand acquired B737s to various cities. In 1983, things get bigger when PEOPLExpress starts its first international flight, Newark - Gatwick on a B747. PEOPLE grows to be United States' fifth largest airline and its success was mostly based on "family" philosophy and very low fares, such as a DFW - EWR (Dallas - Newark) round-trip for only 59.00 US Dollars (USD). PEOPLE started making frivolous expenses, such as the construction of Terminal C at Newark for the cost of 175 million USD and the purchase of Britt Airways and PBA (Provincetown-Boston Airways). Its losses started a sharp increase. Popularity started decreasing. Passengers start feeling more and more the effects of a lack of a computerized reservation system, increasing flight delays and lost baggage. A merger was urgent. It looked into a merger with Frontier in 1986, but Frontier declared bankruptcy a few months later. Texas Air later bought PEOPLE, merged into Continental, along with New York Air and four other carriers in early 1987. One of the only traces of Britt Airways left is the three-letter code of Continental Express, which remained BTA, and which air traffic controllers across the nation see many times a day now.
	All photos: from Airliners.Net: Air Florida B737: photo by John P. Stewart. New York Air DC-9: photo by Pierre Langlois. PEOPLExpress B737: photo by Rich Fedorco. © 1998-2008, airodyssey.net. All rights reserved. Disclaimer, trademarks, privacy policy.