Continental Airlines was a major airline in the United States that operated from 1934 until it merged with United Airlines in 2012. It had ownership interests and brand partnerships with several carriers.
Midwest Airlines was an airline in the United States headquartered in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, that operated from Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport between 1984 and 2010. For a short time, it also operated as a brand of Republic Airways Holdings.
United Express is the brand name for the regional branch of United Airlines, under which five individually owned regional airlines operate short- and medium-haul feeder flights.
Continental Express was the brand name used by a number of independently owned regional airlines providing commuter airliner and regional jet feeder service under agreement with Continental Airlines. In 2012 at the time of Continental's merger with United Airlines, two carriers were operating using the Continental Express brand name:
Continental Micronesia, Inc. (CMI) was a Guamanian company which was a wholly owned subsidiary of Continental Airlines. It operated daily flights to Honolulu, Hawaii, as well as international services to Asia, Micronesia and Australia from its hub at Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport on Guam, a U.S. territory in the western Pacific Ocean. During its final years, the airline, a Delaware corporation, was headquartered in the old terminal building at Won Pat International Airport in Tamuning, Guam.
Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport is a public airport six miles (10 km) east of downtown Amarillo, in Potter County, Texas, United States. The airport was renamed in 2003 after NASA astronaut and Amarillo native Rick Husband, who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in February of that year.
Skyway Airlines was an American ramp and aircraft ground handling services and catering company based in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Until April 5, 2008, it operated as a regional airline and banner carrier exclusively for Midwest Express Airlines under the business name Midwest Connect, feeding Midwest's hub at General Mitchell International Airport with twelve 32-seat Fairchild-Dornier 328JET regional jet aircraft, and four 19-seat Beechcraft 1900 commuter turboprops. Skyway Airlines, along with its parent corporation, Midwest Air Group, has since ceased operations.
Colgan Air was a regional airline in the United States that operated from 1965 until 2012. It became a subsidiary of Pinnacle Airlines Corp. in 2012. The initial headquarters of Colgan Air was located in Manassas, Virginia until 2010, and then Memphis, Tennessee until closure in 2012.
Western Pacific Airlines, or WestPac, was an airline which operated in the United States from 1995 to 1998. A low-cost carrier, it was formed in 1994 under the name Commercial Air, later changed to Western Pacific, and began operating scheduled passenger flights on April 28, 1995, with eight Boeing 737-300s. Edward Gaylord of Gaylord Entertainment Company was involved in the formation and management of the airline. Its headquarters were in unincorporated El Paso County, Colorado, near Colorado Springs.
ExpressJet Airlines was a regional airline in the United States that operated from 1987 until 2022. It was headquartered in College Park, Georgia. The company began as Britt Airways and flew exclusively as Continental Express, the contracted codeshare partner for Continental Airlines. The name was changed to ExpressJet at the beginning of 1995 as the company began acquiring regional jets, replacing its fleet of turboprop aircraft. Along with flying as Continental Express, ExpressJet expanded flying under the Delta Connection brand from 2007 through 2008 and again from 2012 through 2018. Service as American Eagle was flown between 2012 and 2019 and service under the United Express brand began in 2009. ExpressJet also flew an independent operation under their own brand in 2007 through 2008. When Continental Airlines merged into United Airlines in 2012, the Continental Express operations were added to the United Express service. In September 2020, it exited the fee-for-departure airline market and temporarily ceased flights after the conclusion of its contract with its sole remaining mainline partner, United Airlines. In September 2021, ExpressJet resumed operations as both an air charter provider and a regional airline under its own brand aha!—short for "Air-Hotel-Adventure." The brand's route structure focused on the West Coast of the United States with a hub at Reno-Tahoe International Airport, and scheduled flights began on October 24, 2021. The airline, including its brand aha!, filed for bankruptcy on August 23, 2022, having ceased all operations the previous day. In July 2023, the airline announced plans to relaunch as an air charter service using a single leased Boeing 777.
RegionsAir was a 14 CFR Part 121 regional airline based out of the Smyrna Airport in Smyrna, Tennessee, USA. The hub airports for RegionsAir were Lambert-St. Louis International Airport (STL) and Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (CLE).
Sunstate Airlines is a subsidiary of Qantas which operates regional flights under the QantasLink banner throughout Queensland, and between Brisbane and Canberra. Its head office is in Mascot, New South Wales, Australia.
Robert Forman Six was an American businessman who was the CEO of Continental Airlines from 1936 to 1980. Beginning his career in the early days of commercial aviation in the United States, his time as Continental Airlines CEO saw it become one of the world's largest and most profitable legacy airlines.
Frontier Airlines was a local service carrier, a scheduled airline in the United States formed by a merger of Arizona Airways, Challenger Airlines, and Monarch Air Lines on June 1, 1950. Headquartered at the now-closed Stapleton International Airport in Denver, Colorado, the airline ceased operations on August 24, 1986. A new airline using the same name was founded eight years later in 1994.
In the United States, a legacy carrier is an airline that was once economically regulated by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) during the period of airline regulation 1938–1978 or can trace its origin to one that did. The CAB was a now defunct federal agency that tightly controlled almost all US commercial air transport during that period. As related below, many features associated with the legacy airline business model were actually developed not during the regulated era, but instead in the first decade or so of the deregulated era, as legacy carriers adapted to an unfamiliar competitive environment.
Essair was incorporated in 1939, the first airline authorized by the federal Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) to fly as a local service carrier in the United States. Essair Lines changed its name to Pioneer Air Lines in 1946, and served destinations in New Mexico and Texas. Pioneer was acquired by and merged into Continental Airlines in 1955.
Flybmi, styled as flybmi, legally British Midland Regional Limited and formerly branded as bmi Regional, was a regional airline in the United Kingdom that operated scheduled passenger services across the UK and Europe. The head office of the airline was at East Midlands Airport in North West Leicestershire, and it had operating bases at Aberdeen, Brussels, Bristol, East Midlands, Newcastle and Munich.
Eastern Airlines, LLC is an American airline founded in 2010. It operates Boeing 767s and Boeing 777s. It began as Dynamic Airways and later added "International" to its name to reflect its transition from a charter airline into scheduled international services. Under the Dynamic name, the airline was headquartered in High Point, North Carolina, offering service from New York to South America. It used to operate from Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York to the Caribbean, Cancún, and South America.
People Express Airlines, stylized as PEOPLExpress, was a low-cost airline in the United States that operated from 1981 until it merged with Continental Airlines in 1987. Its headquarters was in the North Terminal of Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) in Newark, New Jersey.
