Take a Trip Down Memory Lane With These 15 Defunct Airlines You Might Not Remember

Lifespan: 1927–1991

Pan American World Airways, also known as Pan Am, was an American mainstay with huge ambitions. The airline definitely had its glory days: it flew the Beatles to New York City in 1964. became an icon of the glory days of jet travel, and wanted to spearhead passenger trips to the moon by the year 2000.

Alas, Pan Am encountered financial difficulties in the 1970s, when the oil crises battered the world economy, and in the 1980s it began slowly selling off its bounty of lucrative assets. The company declared bankruptcy in 1991.

Lifespan: 1934–2012

Continental isn’t so much dead as it is operating under a new name and licensing agreements. The airline merged with the parent company of United Airlines, the UAL Corporation, in a 2012 deal worth $3 billion. Though you won’t see the Continental name emblazoned on aircraft anymore, United employees still wear the same uniforms their Continental predecessors wore.

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Lifespan: 2003–2006

Yep, it was a real thing.

You might expect Hooters Air, from the fast-casual dining franchise of the same name, to operate express service to various Margaritaville resorts and golf clubs, and you’d be sort of correct.

Hooters Air flew under the umbrella of Pace Airlines, which Hooters owner Robert Brooks acquired in 2002. It operated out of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and served destinations throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas.

Times were good for a few years, but every great party must eventually come to an end. In 2006, Hooters Air abruptly called it quits, and the jig was up for old guys looking to drink beer at altitude in the company of women half their age.

Lifespan: 1928–1982

Some aviation geeks consider Braniff a predecessor to Southwest, as it was based in Texas, and carved out an early niche serving much of the South, Midwest, and eventually Latin America. A bunch of historical factors—like a chaotic oil market, the Airline Deregulation Act, and fallout from the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization strike—brought the airline to its knees in 1982.

If the logo looks familiar, it’s because South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone named their production company after Braniff, and the logo can be seen at the end of the show’s earlier episodes. The more you know.

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Lifespan: 1930–2001

Born of a government-mandated merger between Western Air and Transcontinental Air Transport in 1930, the carrier didn’t become Trans World Airlines for another two decades.

TWA grew into a huge name in aviation, but ultimately fell victim to the whims of its second primary shareholder, Carl Icahn, in the 1980s. According to USA Today: “Icahn’s management focused on squeezing short-term profit from TWA instead of focusing on its system. TWA was forced to go private, saddling it with debt. To pay for its new debt, the airline sold profitable international routes and airline gates.”

The company was bought up by American Airlines in 2001.

Lifespan: 1949–1967

Befitting its name, Central Airlines serviced Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, and other cities dotted across the U.S. heartland. This played into the airline’s downfall, as most of its network was made up of sparsely populated cities with populations no bigger than 20,000. The airline was eventually gobbled up by the initial Frontier Airlines (not to be confused with the low-cost carrier that still operates today).

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Lifespan: 1950–1986

Frontier emerged after a mega-merger between Arizona Airways, Challenger Airlines, and Monarch Airlines. It was headquartered in Denver, and had hubs in Kansas City and St. Louis, Missouri; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Dallas, Texas. It eventually bit the bullet in the mid-1980s, but a niche group of fans still revel in its memory and ephemera online.

The new Frontier Airlines, which is still operating, was established in 1994.

Lifespan: 1992–1997

ValuJet wasn’t around very long, and served a modest network of 28 destinations throughout the United States while it existed. One big reason for the sudden ending: the catastrophic crash of ValuJet Flight 592, when a DC-9 plummeted into the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 people on board. An onslaught of bad PR after the accident eventually led to the embattled airline merging with the Airways company and becoming AirTrans Airways.

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Lifespan: 1926–1991

Eastern came to prominence thanks in part to the federal government’s help in the 1930s, when the U.S. divvied up mail subsidies among emerging airlines. Its demise decades later was largely attributable to the government’s curtailing of aviation regulations. The airline declared it was ceasing operations in 1991, and The New York Times eulogized the carrier’s run as such:

“The airline, which had been struggling for almost two years to rebuild under the protection of the bankruptcy court, is by far the largest casualty of the pressures brought by the deregulation of the industry 13 years ago.”

Lifespan: 1981–1987

People Express was a kind of forerunner to the low-cost carriers of today, such as Spirit and Frontier Airlines. Things went well for a number of years, with the airline beginning to offer transatlantic flights to London on a Boeing 747 in 1983. But a multitude of factors, such as diminishing returns from a broadening network and typically cheap airfare, contributed to People Express’ demise. It was absorbed by Continental in 1987.

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Lifespan: 1979–2015

Called All American Aviation when it was established in 1937, this company went through a few iterations before it was ultimately absorbed into American Airlines in 2015. However, the airline will forever be associated with the “Miracle on the Hudson,” when Chelsey “Sully” Sullenberger steered US Airways Flight 1549 to a safe water landing on the Hudson River after an errant flock of geese knocked out both engines.

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Lifespan: 1988–1998

Carnival is a giant in the cruise-ship business, and the company apparently thought it could replicate that success in the fickle airline world. It thought wrong.

Carnival had a fleet of 25 planes with a network that extended across the Eastern Seaboard and into the Bahamas, Haiti, and Puerto Rico, but was eventually taken over by Pan American World Airways. Its new parent company had well-documented financial travails of its own, and was later bought by Massachusetts carrier Boston-Maine Airways, which fizzled out in 2008.

Lifespan: 1984–2010

Operating out of Milwaukee and Kansas City, Midwest Airlines was aptly named. It added a slew of destinations over the years, building out a network far beyond its home turf. A series of mergers ensued in the early 2000s, with the carrier eventually morphing into the budget carrier Frontier Airlines.

There’s been chatter about bringing Midwest back from the dead, with murmurings of investors mounting a push to revive it, though little to nothing has happened on that front.

Lifespan: 1967–1987

A regional carrier with brightly colored plans evoking West Coast sunshine, it serviced 13 destinations, and was headquartered at Orange County, California’s John Wayne Airport. The airline eventually joined forces with American Airlines in 1987, as the airline industry’s plethora of smaller, regional airlines slowly gave way to the few giants we have today.

Lifespan: 1945–1972

Mohawk enjoyed gradual expansion outside its original mid-Atlantic network throughout the first two decades of its existence. The early 1960s were especially fruitful, as the airline became one of the top 13 local-service airlines in the country after it added a number of new routes. It wasn’t all good, however, as unrest among the airline’s pilots manifested itself in two strikes during the 1960s, one of which lasted for 154 days. The negative press provided a crippling blow for the brand, and it was eventually folded into Allegheny Airlines, which later became US Airways.

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