Air West Pt1: The Airline That Had to Happen

As the 1960s drew to a close the CAB in the USA was looking for ways to wean the local service airlines off of subsidies. This meant a gradual movement away from serving local communities and instead using economies of scale to serve wider regions. The result was mergers, including the unique tri-merger that created 'The airline that had to happen' - Air West!

When the merger of the three Western local service airlines (Bonanza, West Coast and Pacific Air Lines) was approved, in January 1968, it was one of several consolidations that began to see the thinning out of the original local service airline pool and their replacement by large 'regional' airlines capable of reducing their need for subsidies and for the first time competing (in a limited regulated fashion) with the large trunk airlines.

Central had already been taken over by Frontier, whilst Allegheny was gearing up for its takeover of Lake Central. It wasn't just the removal of subsidies that was behind the merger proposal however as Pacific at least was also struggling to compete effectively in the unregulated intra-state Californian market where it faced both PSA and Air California. The merger of Bonanza, West Coast and Pacific created an airline of scale, one that had a route network spanning over 8,800 miles and eight US states as well as Canada and Mexico.

Western Airlines was against the new name of Air West but it was over-ruled in February allowing the painting of the merged fleet to begin. Technically operations as Air West did not begin until July 1, 1968, however aircraft began to get repainted sooner. Indeed some of West Coast's DC-3s even wore the bright new Air West scheme despite technically never operating for the airline (they were retired on June 30).

From the awesome Ed Coates collection. There's a small For Sale sign on the tail.

It was a major undertaking, never done before, to merge together three separate airlines but at least the fleet was reasonably homogenous. The most common type would be the Fairchild F-27 (which had been operated by all three airlines), followed by Douglas DC-9-10s (from Bonanza and West Coast) plus a trio of Boeing 727-100s (from Pacific). Also in the mix were four Piper Navajo 'mini-liners' coming from West Coast. With Pacific's Martin 404s retired in 1967 the fleet was modern.

Piper Navajo 'MiniLiner' N1132. The Navajos didn't last long as Air West dropped service to smaller communities

The new livery was also modern. Air West must have been one of, if not, the first airline to adopt a white fuselage. The tail was split into two halves with four different colour combinations. It was called the 'Fiesta' livery. It appears that the idea was that the different colour combos represented different regional areas, with one add even saying they've 'matched the tail colours of each plane with the colour of the territory it covers'.

Even with a modern fleet rationalisation was needed. Larger DC-9-30s (five of them) were on order from Bonanza and West Coast whilst Pacific had six 737-200s on order to replace its 727-100s. It was clear the Douglas jets, which were already familiar in their shorter versions, made the most sense and the 737s were cancelled in favour of an optimistic order for larger 727-200s (two orders and four options). The 727-100s were disposed of as more DC-9s arrived. Indeed the orders for series 30s were increased to 16, four of which arrived before the July 1st start date. The 737s were sold to competitor Air California, which must have been a little galling.

A choice of headquarters was also needed as the orignal airline's HQs were spaced far apart from each other - Bonanza in Phoenix, West Coast in Seattle and Pacific in San Francisco. The San Francisco headquarters won out even though the new management team was headed by West Coast's Nick Bez as chairman and Bonnaza's Edmund Converse as vice-chairman. President of the new company was E. Robert Henry from Pacific.

The creation of Air West appeared to go quite smoothly. The airline advertised its new name and status widely as 'The airline that had to happen'. It's fleet were 'Flexible Flyers' available in four different sizes allowing 'us to fly to more places in the west than any other airline'.

Unfortunately the merger of three different airlines into one, across such a wide area, with a merged leadership team in a competitive environment, when none of the components was particularly successful was not an easy task. Almost from the start the Air West experiment was a disaster. In the end the airline would last in its new form for less than two years but would be reborn as something quite different. In part 2 we'll look at the short life of Air West.

References

Proctor, J. 2003. Air West 'Top Banana' Pt 2. Airways 80