Of all the airlines to bite the dust after the deregulation act of 1978, what was your favorite.?

Question

Of all the airlines to bite the dust after the deregulation act of 1978, what was your favorite.?

Answer 1

PSA (Pacific Southwest Airlines, the grinning bird) or

Braniff (GREAT multicolored planes...

Answer 2

Braniff International was really the first major to go down as a direct result of deregulation. JetBlue and Southwest tout their leather seats as though they created the concept, but it was Braniff, who had hired Halston to design plane interiors and uniforms, that was best known for pioneering leather seats. Their colorful planes (flying jellybeans) also stood out, mostly in a good way. Sadly, Braniff management thought major expansion was the answer to deregulation, so they took on enormous debt buying planes and grew their route structure by about 50%. They were wrong and folded just a couple of years later.

The one that affected me most was National Airlines. They were a great airline serving my family's most-traveled route at the time, between New York and Miami. They had a great ad campaign called "Fly Me" and they named their planes after female flight attendants featured in the ads. They also named a couple after Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis because National was featured in one of their movies. Deregulation made National a prime takeover target and they were bought out at a ridiculous price after a bidding war between TWA and Pan Am. Pan Am won the battle, but the price would be their own failure. They lasted about 10 more years by selling off most of their assets, including the Pan Am building in NYC, which is now the Met Life building but will always be remembered as Pan Am by long-time New Yorkers. National's big "Sun King" logo is fondly remembered.