In 1949, Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) began weekly service between San Diego and Oakland, California. The carrier started the operation with a leased Douglas DC-3 with a stop in Burbank, California.
Pacific Southwest Airlines was a United States airline based in San Diego, California, that operated from 1949 to 1988. It was the first major low-cost carrier in the United States.
The airline advertised itself as “The World’s Friendliest Airline,” and its planes, the PSA Grinningbirds, had a smile on their noses. According to the Los Angeles Times’ Opinion L.A. section, PSA has been “practically the unofficial flag carrier airline of California for nearly forty years.”
As an intrastate carrier, the airline initially serviced solely the state of California.
Southwest Airlines (WN) would subsequently adopt this strategy, which avoided the high expenses of federal oversight and reproduced PSA’s success in California in Texas.
After the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, the airline expanded to cities in other western states, and then to numerous cities in Mexico.
History and First Flight
Kenny Friedkin founded the airline in 1949 with a $1,000-a-month leased Douglas DC-3. Friedkin obtained information from a travel agent while founding the airline as a result of lessons learnt from a failed predecessor airline (Friedkin Airlines).
- On May 6, 1949, the DC-3 began weekly flights from San Diego to Oakland via Burbank.
- Reservations were taken at a renovated World War II surplus latrine that served as a ticket office.
- In 1951, the airline moved its flights from Oakland to San Francisco International Airport, and in late 1955, the DC-3s were replaced with two Douglas DC-4s from Capital Airlines, which were painted to look like the Douglas DC-6.
- In late 1959, PSA replaced the 70-seat DC-4s with 92-seat Lockheed L-188 Electras with a six-seat lounge.
- It got its sixth Electra in 1963, and by that time it had transported more people between the Bay Area and Los Angeles than any other airline.
- Total PSA passengers increased from 355,000 in 1959 to 1,305,000 in 1963 and 5,162,000 in 1970, according to a report published in Aviation Week in 1971.
Legacy and the PSA Brand
The creator of WN, Herb Kelleher, did extensive research on PSA and copied many of the airline’s principles into his own corporate culture, including employing the similar “Long Legs And Short Nights” slogan for stewardesses on early flights.
PSA also aided WN in the training of its first class of mechanics, as well as lending the budding carrie flight manuals and other essentials.
PSA was the first of two airlines to combine into the existing USAir in 1986. In 1988, the PSA acquisition was completed. In November 1995, USAir, subsequently US Airways, changed Jetstream International Airlines to PSA Airlines (OH) to secure the Pacific Southwest Airlines trademark. Later that month, PSA moved its corporate headquarters to Vandalia, Ohio.
Following its second bankruptcy filing in 2005, America West Airlines purchased US Airways and retained the name until merging with American Airlines (AA) in 2015.In August 2015, the new OH announced that it would construct a maintenance base at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG).
OH would launch a new 45,000-square-foot maintenance base at the Greenville Spartanburg International Airport a year later.
Stay Connected with Aviation a2z! Subscribe us and get notified on your fingertips.