Eastern Airlines to return - possibly
 

Interesting news:

http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/30/news...html?hpt=hp_t3

Eastern Airlines Coming Back
 

I read that a new investor group is trying to restart Eastern Airlines this fall. Airline to be based out of Miami using Airbus aircraft. We need to bring back more old airlines with all the mergers and less airlines to fly.

Eastern is gone so there is nothing to 'bring back'. Its going to a new airline but just using the Eastern name.

What's the advantage of "bringing back old airlines" versus starting new ones, and how do you propose any new entrant in the US market can survive long enough to cross into profit (cf. Virgin America)? We've allowed an oligopoly to take hold where it's virtually impossible to start a serious new airline. If it ever threatens the big boys, they'll crush it like a bug. We (meaning regulators) have ruined everything. I give "New Eastern" as much of a shot as Hooters Air.

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I'd give Hooters air a better shot, actually :D

Not to mention that by the time they called it quits Eastern did not exactly have a stellar reputation. Perhaps people have forgotten, but for all the other reasons alone this is another dodo.

I'm old enough to recall that decades before Internet communities, long before airline affinity programs, there was a club called WHEAL -- We Hate Eastern Air Lines. You could apply for membership and get a wallet card and everything. To say people had a love-hate relationship with EA would be charitable.

I still have my old Eastern Airlines employee badge - i wonder if I will have flight benefits on the new version? :D

Usually when people resurrect a defunct brand, it's because there was *some* positive brand equity associated with it. (Hey, let's resurrect all of those 1960's beers! @:-))

I don't know anyone who has such a warm and fuzzy reaction to Eastern Airlines. My last memory of them is all of the stranded passengers when they abruptly shut down, hours after reassuring the world that they weren't shutting down. Before that, I just thought of them as an airline that nobody had a good experience with.

I'm sure buying the brand assets now was pretty cheap. Why this little Miami charter outfit wants them, I have no idea. Seeing an A319 painted with that livery is a sure-fire way to make me run in the opposite direction.

I get why people have had this idea before with Pan Am. But I really don't get Eastern.

Eastern Airlines is back? You think enough time has passed?
 

Just read this:

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/art...0-737s-399328/

Wow. If you think your current airline is bad, you never flew Eastern Airlines back in the day. The last few of EAL were really bad.

I hope for them that enough time has passed that people don't remember the original EAL.

Let's be clear that this is nothing to do with Eastern Airways who run a really good operation out of Aberdeen and other UK cities to Norway and elsewhere.

No. You are correct. I believe its the Eastern Airlines that ran itself into the ground with really bad maintenance practices in the late 80s.

I believe that remembering that anything about flying in the past was bad and especially implying that it was worse than the terribleness of the present is a violation of FlyerTalk rules. Please re-remember EAL as a wonderful airline.

I wasn't aware that I was violating any FT rules by talking about Eastern Airlines. My apologies if I am. Please enlighten me as to these rules so I may avoid any serious repercussions for stating these facts.

Even if that is a violation of FT rules, i don't think you can force somebody to remember something that was clearly bad as something good...