WestAir Commuter Airlines (1979) expanded rapidly to provide connecting passenger feed to United Airlines on both coasts as of the year 1991. By then WestAir Airlines dba United Express was part of parent company, WestAir Holdings, Inc.
The East Coast division was spun off to a newly formed company, Ed Acker‘s Atlantic Coast Airlnes dba United Express. At dissolution Employee Associates who had been domiciled on the East were offered a one time opportunity to come home.
Those who elected to return to West Coast would be out of luck for WestAir was to become part of the ambitious Mesa Air Group before then losing their United Express contract all together. Atlantic Coast continued to prosper in the subsequent years, offering stable employment but that’s another story.
Load factors were not sustainable, reference the ASMs in the chart. This was a good thing for the relative comfort of those onboard but unfortunate for the company’s bottom line which contrast with the always packed flights of today.
Those were exciting times. From humble beginnings in Cessna 402’s and Britten-Norman Trislander’s primarily in California only to 37 cities in six western states and 28 cities in eleven eastern states, WestAir operated a national route system (their words).