Airline Name
UTA (Union de Transports Aériens)IATA: UT / ICAO: UTA / Callsign: UTA
Country of Origin
France
Aircraft Types Used (from those available in WoA)
B744 (747-400) (2 operated, 1 (M) variant),M variant,
B743 (747-300) (3 operated, 2 (M) variant),
M at SXM!!!,
B742F (747-200F) (3 operated),
B742 (747-200B(M)) (1 operated),
B742 (747-200B(M)(SUD)) (2 operated),
Not in-game,
DC10 (DC10-30),
Also operated a host of DC8 variants, freight and pax.
Why should this airline be added?
A French airline founded in 1963 which operated a fleet of 747s and DC10s up until 1990 when it was merged with Air France, along with Air Inter, to form a bigger group airline.It would be a cool airline to see in-game due to its vast amount of 747 variants it operated and it flying to in-game airports like SXM, SYD and upcoming HKG, as well as being a massive carrier linking up Africa, especially the ex-French bits. It would also be ace to have it as a regular out of Paris for players to use as a competitor to Air France, Corsair and French Bee.
A wiki bit about the 80s and merger if anybody wishes to read. French gov meddling killed it.
In 1986 the French government unexpectedly decided to relax its policy of neatly dividing traffic rights for scheduled air services between Air France, Air Inter and UTA, without any route overlaps between them. The regulatory framework governing France’s air transport sector at the time dated from 1963. It had prevented the country’s three main scheduled airlines from operating outside their respective spheres of influence and competing with each other. The French government’s decision to adopt a less rigid interpretation of its policy gradually reversed both of these rules. It therefore enabled UTA to launch scheduled services to new destinations within Air France’s sphere of influence, in competition with that airline, for the first time. Paris — San Francisco became the first route UTA served in competition with Air France non-stop from Paris. (Air France responded by extending some of its non-stop Paris – Los Angeles services to Papeete, Tahiti, which competed with UTA on the Los Angeles – Papeete sector.) UTA’s ability to secure traffic rights outside its traditional sphere of influence in competition with Air France was the result of a successful campaign it had mounted to lobby its government to enable it to grow faster, thereby becoming a more dynamic and more profitable business. During that time, UTA also planned to launch a short-haul European feeder network, which was to be operated by its Aéromaritime subsidiary. In the event, these plans were scuppered by a long-running, bitter industrial dispute between UTA’s management and the unions representing the majority of pilots at Aéromaritime as well as at UTA itself. The dispute was about the introduction of new, lower pay scales at Aéromaritime to prepare it for the competition it was likely to face at the hands of Europe’s new breed of much lower cost, aggressively expanding independent airlines, as exemplified by UK-based Air Europe at that time. It lasted for the better part of a year from the end of 1988 until October 1989 and resulted in the grounding of both Aéromaritime and UTA during that period. UTA’s plans for a European feeder network were also overtaken by its subsequent merger with Air France.
1986 was also the year UTA lost its monopoly on the Paris—Papeete route to Minerve, France’s leading contemporary charter airline.
In 1988 French Transport Minister Michel Delebarre partially reversed the French government’s relaxed policy on allocating traffic rights to the country’s three main contemporary scheduled airlines when he decided to deny UTA the right to fly non-stop from Paris to Newark in direct competition with Air France. The aim was to protect Air France’s position as the country’s dominant scheduled carrier by making UTA a less attractive takeover target for its foreign rivals in the event of a merger. The French government feared that Air France’s smaller size relative to British Airways, Lufthansa and the US giants as well as its fragmented long-haul network put it at a commercial disadvantage in a liberalised air transport market. Air France, Air Inter and UTA were therefore encouraged to co-operate rather than compete with each other.
On 12 January 1990 UTA, along with Air Inter and Air France itself, became part of an enlarged Air France group, which in turn became a wholly owned subsidiary of Groupe Air France. On 18 December 1992, UTA ceased to exist as a legal entity within Groupe Air France.