Originally Posted by
jlemon
Mexicana followed by your subsequent response of Braniff International are both excellent and logical guesses.
However, the air carrier in question wasn't BN and stops were not made in Dallas/Fort Worth or Houston Intercontinental.
And the answer here may prove to be a bit surprising.
Hmm... well, no stops in Dallas or San Antone would seem to take American out of the equation, and in 1979, I can't think of any new Mexican carriers that had sprung up, so we're looking for a US carrier...
Three days a week has me thinking Frontier, which used to route down through ABQ and ELP to various west coast destinations in Mexico, but of course by 1979 Frontier had divested its fleet of 727s and did not offer First Class at that time anyway.
I vaguely remember Continental flying to Mexico out of El Paso as well about this time. I'm not sure of the destination, but MEX seems more likely.
Delta and Eastern both served ACA, but it's hard tp figure either airline starting a Mexico flight routing out of Chicago, thence to fly away from ACA towards ATL. With all the populous northeastern cities both airlines served, and their traditional route systems, I'm not seeing ORD as a flight origination point.
I think we've gotta look west and/or south out of ORD...
Haven't.mentioned United yet, but I don't think UA ever served ACA.
So I guess we're in wild guess territory. CO used to serve Mexico through places like Brownsville and McAllen, but IIRC, all those flights routed through Houston and didn't happen until the 80s or 90s. And IAH has been eliminated, anyway.
I guess I'll go CO routing ORD - DEN - ELP - ACA with a 72S.