Airline Name
New York Air
IATA: NY / ICAO: NYA / Callsign: APPLE
Country of Origin
United States of America
Aircraft Types Used (from those available in WoA)
B733 (737-300) (8 operated),Continental’s New York Air livery,
Not in-game,
MD82 (McDonnell Douglas MD-82) (9 operated),
Meatball Continental’s New York Air,
DC93 (Douglas DC 9-31/32) (20 operated),
BOS,
La Guardia 727 collection,
Continental’s New York Air livery,
Meatball appearance,
Why should this airline be added?
Founded in 1980 as an LCC based at LaGuardia Airport and operating out of hubs at New York Newark (This was not so much a hub as it operated alongside LGA), Raleigh-Durham from 1983 and then IAD from 1985. The airline planned to begin by operating between LGA, BOS and DCA (Washington National) to compete with Eastern Air Lines on these routes, these flights being hourly. The inaugural flight to DCA from LGA flew on December 19th 1980, however, only 5 of the 125 seats were filled. By April 1981 the situation had bettered with an average load factor of 62%, just shy of the break even load factor of 65% the airline was aiming for. Routes were launched from LaGuardia to Cleveland with others planned for Dayton and Pittsburgh as well as Upstate New York, however, these were cancelled and a route from LGA to Detroit was moved to Newark though the Cincinatti and Louisville routes were a success.They had a troublesome start, however, as firstly the 1981 ATC strike meant that slots were heftily reduced in the Northeast US and airlines were forced to cut flights, a problem for New York Air as its DC-9 operations were not optimised for these conditions whereas competitors like Eastern were able to switch out their smaller aircraft for A300s to operate on the constrained routes with greater capacity, leading to New York Air dropping its Boston to LGA service. However, the airline did found a small hub at Boston in order to maintain a presence, offering flights to Orlando and Baltimore, though these proved to be unprofitable and were dropped in 1982 along with the Cleveland, Cincinnati and Louisville flights from LGA due to competition from Untied and Eastern.
Another issue was the airline was part of Texas Air and being the rabid cut throat company it was, it declined unionisation within the airline, something that was not met with joy by the employees of Texas International (Another Texas Air airline but this one unionised) who went on strike. The launch of New York Air also angered ALPA (Airline Pilots Association) who to try to prevent the expansion of New York Air as a non-unionised airline, created a political style campaign handing out leaflets and brochures containing statistics and showing its poor record to the general public. Eventually, Texas Air renegotiated their contract with Texas International which stopped them striking, however, this was not done with New York Air and ALPA was still unhappy, though they wound down their campaign to focus on the ATC strike.
In mid 1982, after a tumultuous 1981, the airline was heavily in debt and required restructuring which it did so by shrinking the network, however, they relaunched the LGA to BOS route and opened some new routes to destinations with business demand for flights and then opening Raleigh hub in 1983, however, this was closed by 1985 and replaced with the IAD hub. In early 1985, the airline began to take delivery of its first 737-300’s, of which 8 would eventually be delivered out of the order of 24, the rest being taken by Continental after the merger.
In 1986, New York Air was directly taken over by Texas Air and began codesharing with Continental (Whom Texas Air had owned since 1982) on routes they both operated, with the airline rebranding to Continental’s New York AIr. During this period, New York Air moved out of LGA completely and into Newark, ending LGA operations for good. In 1988, plans were made to merge Frontier and People Express into Continental along with New York Air, with the airline continuing a lot of the routes but ceasing the Dulles hub in 1989 bringing to an end the airline.
This would be an excellent airline to see in-game, with its 737-300 being perfect for part of a pass of a remodelled IAD and in general, plus with a potential MD/DC family being added in the future, there would be 2 more liveries to see to round the fleet out, all with a fantastic livery.
1985 routes,
March 1984 route map,
1981 routes,
