Continental bought People Express, New York Air, and (the original) Frontier all around the same time... probably with a 12-month period. Meantime, Frank Lorenzo, who controlled both Continental and Eastern through Texas Air, was busy stripping Eastern of its assets, including its share of System One (the CRS), which he sold to himself for a song. Eventually, when Eastern went into Ch. 11 (due to the pilots' strike) he cherry-picked the assets to sell to Continental, which is how CO wound up with some EA routes, although they decided to give up the Atlanta hub. Of course, Eastern never flew again and switched to Chapter 7 or 13 or something. The nominal President of Eastern during much of this period was former astronaut Frank Borman, who probably should have stuck to lunar landers. Later, Eastern was briefly run by Martin Shugrue, who was also involved in the PanAm bankruptcy.

For the record, Hughes AirWest, Southern Airways, and North Central Airlines merged in 1979 to form Republic Airways, which flew until about 1986.

[This message has been edited by RichG (edited 08-29-2001).]