Originally Posted by
WHBM
I still think Pan Am may provide the clue, because they junked the old National secondary points pretty soon after the National merger, and someone else will have come along.
Altair was one that capitalised on this. They had F28s and DC9s. They were based in Philadelphia, which gives us the third stop. We've had a lot of Fokker questions recently.
Lets go for Altair. If they picked up the old National route south of Washington then maybe they routed Jacksonville-Savannah-Charleston SC-Washington-Philadelphia-Hartford. With an F28.
8. Correct! Altair (AK) began operations as a commuter air carrier with Beech 99 turboprops during the late 60's. They then added Nord 262 turboprops to their fleet. By the early 1980's, the turboprops were gone as Altair had become an all-jet airline with a small fleet of DC9-30 and F28 aircraft which they called "Starjets". I believe the F28s were series 4000 aircraft. The flight in question also had an interesting routing. Here's the complete sched....
AK 385/348: Buffalo (BUF) 11:05a - 11:30a Rochester (ROC) 12:00n - 1:00p Philadelphia (PHL) 1:40p - 3:10p Savannah (SAV) 3:35p - 4:00p Charleston (CHS) 4:30p - 5:50p Washington D.C. (DCA) 6:30p - 7:05p Philadelphia (PHL) 7:50p - 8:45p Hartford/Springfield (BDL)
Op: Daily
Equip: F28
Note: flight number change to AK 348 at SAV (AK 385 was shown as thru service from BUF, ROC and PHL to CHS)
Jet equipment apparently assisted in causing the demise of Altair as they were out of business a short time later.