Originally Posted by jlemon

I'll go ahead and answer the last three questions from my Jan. 8 post....
15) And the city is......Houston.

The first "cross town" airline was Houston Metro operating the DHC-6 "Twin Otter" turboprop. The airline constructed their own STOL landing strip and terminal (which even had a bar) in a cow pasture adjacent to Clear Lake City (CLC) near the NASA space center in order to shuttle passengers to and from Houston Intercontinental (IAH) which had replaced Houston Hobby (HOU) at the time as the primary airline airport.

The second "cross town" operation was flown by Emerald Air between IAH and HOU with a DC-9 operated under contract to Continental as the "Houston Proud Express" (the airplane was painted in Continental colors). Later on, CO flew their mainline B737-300s between IAH and HOU (I was on one of these flights that only had 12 passengers on board so they moved all of us up to first class). In addition, Continental Connection (or was it CO Express?) flew the Beechcraft 1900D between IAH and HOU. I enjoyed leaning out into the aisle of this twin turboprop and watching the landing through the flight deck windows as there was no door separating the cockpit from the pax cabin.

The third and final "cross town" operation was flown by Continental Express between IAH and Ellington Field (EFD, which is a former Air Force base located near the Johnson Space Center). Initially, I believe ATR-42s were used which were subsequently replaced with Continental Express Embraer ERJ-135 regional jets operated by ExpressJet. I flew between EFD and IAH many times on board the ERJ-135 while making connections at IAH to and from CO mainline flights.