Transatlantic Low Cost Pt1: Transamerica Airlines

I've written a brief history of Trans International, one of the most important supplemental airlines of the 1960s and 70s, previously, but the recent purchase of a  T tail 747 has spurred me to look into their later years a bit more closely, by which time they were Transamerica Airlines. Not satisfied with charters, as with others, they looked at the deregulated long-haul market and wanted a piece of that.

Trans International had been sold by its creator Kirk Kerkorian in 1968 to the financial services giant Transamerica Corp, who was diversifying its business into such varied areas as movie distribution, manufacturing, car rentals as well as airlines. Trans Internatinal expanded by purchasing other supplemental airlines like Universal and Saturn but as with many others deregulation gave it the chance to have a go at meatier fare than military charters and freight hauling. It was certainly not satisifed with being the world's largest charter airline alone.

The airline belatedly changed its name to associate with its parent in October 1979 becoming Transamerica Airlines just as its first DC-10s were being delivered. These were followed in December by the first of 5 ordered new build 747-200s. In keeping with its roots and flexible business plan all of these 747-271s were Combis (or 271Cs). In fact they were the first Combis delivered to a US customer and the first General Ekectric powered 747s delivered worldwide.

The 747s were delivered in a 484 seat layout ready for Transamerica's new scheduled transatlantic services, which had begun only slightly earlier on November 2, 1979 between New York, Shannon and Amsterdam. The new tail logo used the well known Transamerica T familiar due to its association with Transamerica's United Artists film studio.

In the end only three 747s were purchased of the original five and they were registered N741TV-743TV. In keeping with Transamerica's business model the 747s, as with the rest of the fleet were leased out for varying periods. Despite this the European route network increased with destinations such as Frankfurt and Paris added. The airline was profitable with earnings of $21 million in 1981 but that wasn't to last forever.

The 747s also operated to Hawaii as Transamerica had a deal with Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays. The routing was rather oddly STL-DFW-LAX-HNL and operated westbound on Tuesdays and Saturdays. The 747s could also be seen operating to Tahiti from Los Angeles.

The early 1980s were not a period of global economic success and Transamerica suffered like many others. It attempted to cut costs by selling its 3 DC-10s to Federal Express and cutting the European services in 1984. It also transferred some cargo services to a non-unionised affiliate that used its old name Trans International and some of the airline's DC-8s. The latter move no doubt caused much employee unrest, though this wasn't that unusual by the look of things. Flight attendants threatened strikes in 1982 and there had been three strikes in the previous decade. Profits at the airline were hard to come by and losses for 1985 mounted to $6 million, which ballooned to $11.2 million in the first 6 months of 1986.

In the end though the airline side of the business appeared to be struggling for profitability it looks like it was the airline's parent that initiated the carrier's demise. Transamerica signalled in early 1986 that it was divesting of non-core (i.e. not finance related) assets which not surprisingly included the airlines. The carriers were put up for sale and though there was some interest, from a New York investment firm called Meridian Partners and an investor group of employees, no deals were consummated and Transamerica services ceased on September 30, 1986. It meant the layoff of the airline's 1,150 staff and was seen at the time as a gamble to force a deal through. Regardless the airline's components were worth more than $300 million so it is likely that a profit was made on the carrier's bones.

Transamerica Boeing 747-271C N742TV Gemini Jets 1:400 Scale Model Airliner

It was a sad end for an airline with a long history, however in hindsight it was probably the right one as there was little future in the type of operations Transamerica ran, especially without a unified workforce and management. The airline's first 747, N741TV, was sold to Cargolux in January 1987 as LX-ACV. In March 1999 she joined Atlas Air as N538MC but only nine months later she was sold to CAL Cargo Airlines of Israel as 4X-ICL. She was stored in December 2008 and broken up in April 2011 at Tel Aviv.

References

Timetables images from http://www.timetableimages.com
TIA/TAA Exemployees Group
UPI Archives. 1982, June. The Association of Flight Attendants threatened to strike Transamerica
Sing, B. 1986, August. Transamerica Airlines to Halt Operations : Carrier Unable to Find Satisfactory Buyer; 1,150 Layoffs Expected. LA Times
Aeromoes Fleets Transamerica
Norwood, Tom. Deregulation Knockouts Part One