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Empire Airlines (1974–1986)
Empire Airlines was a small jet carrier serving mainly New York and adjacent states with the stated aim to be “chief airline for the Empire State”. Empire was a small but notable deregulation success, pulling itself up by its bookstraps and achieving industry recognition. Empire stayed break-even or better, despite aggressive competition by much larger and/or better capitalized airlines, the turbulence of the early deregulation era and many years of substantial expansion. The airline achieved annual revenues of about $90mm (over $250mm in 2024 dollars) before accepting a purchase offer from Piedmont Airlines in October 1985. The transaction closed in early 1986 and after a brief period, Empire merged into Piedmont. Piedmont itself merged into USAir in 1989 which, many years later, merged with American Airlines in 2015. Founded by Paul Quackenbush, Empire Airlines began with a base at Oneida County Airport serving the Utica-Rome metropolitan area. Empire leveraged the withdraw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Local Service Carrier
Local service carriers, or local service airlines, originally known as feeder carriers or feeder airlines, were a category of US domestic airline created/regulated by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), the now-defunct federal agency that tightly regulated the US airline industry 1938–1978. Initially 23 such airlines were certified from 1943 to 1949 to serve smaller US domestic markets unserved/poorly served by existing domestic carriers, the trunk carriers, which flew the main, or trunk, routes. However, not all of these started operation and some that did later had their certificates withdrawn. One other carrier was certificated in 1950 as a replacement. "Feeder airline" alludes to another purpose, that such airlines would feed passengers to trunk carriers. It was expected that a significant number of passenger itineraries would involve a connection between a local service carrier and a trunk carrier. Local service carriers ultimately became substantial carriers in their own ri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
