An ambitious if short-lived carrier, AWA is established in Seattle, Washington, by furniture maker and flight school operator Joseph L. Carman Jr. during the spring of 1929 to offer services over four widely separated routes.
Revenue passenger and express services commence on April 15 as the Lockheed Model 5 Vega floatplane Juneau, piloted by Anscel Eckman with Robert E. “Bob” Ellis as navigator, is flown 940 miles nonstop from Lake Union to Juneau.
Other flights are inaugurated linking the Washington towns of Wenatchee, Pasco, Olympia, and Seattle plus the Alaskan towns of Ketchikan and Sitka via Juneau and the British Columbia cities of Victoria and Nanaimo via Vancouver.
Service is steady and the fleet, which grows to comprise 10 Fairchild 71s and 2 Lockheed Model 5 Vega floatplanes, transports a total of
12.000 passengers during its first year. Included in this total are some
2.000 passengers carried by the 2 Vegas (the Wrangell had arrived in the fall) in Alaska.
Seattle-based Inter Cityair Express, which had been formed in January to offer scheduled passenger flights to Yakima, is purchased in April 1930. During the spring, four more float-equipped Vegas, christened Taku, Petersburg, Sitka, and Skagway, are sent up to Alaska.
On June 1, twice-weekly flights are begun from Seattle to Juneau. This new service, coming on top of earlier expansion in a time of depression, cannot, without such technical aids as weather forecasting and radio, be maintained.
As a result, traffic declines and within a month, on July 1, the carrier is sold to Seattle-Wenatchee-Yakima Airways. Services are continued under the new name. The float-equipped Lockheed Model 5 Vega Baku, piloted by W. A. Williams with five passengers on a charter, catches fire over Kingston, Washington, on August 4; a nonfatal forced landing is quickly made.
While participating in a search for the lost Canadian flyer E. J. E. “Paddy” Burke, the float-equipped Lockheed Model 5 Vega Skagway, piloted by Robin Renehan with two passengers, crashes in bad weather on October 28-29, 100 miles from Ketchikan (three dead). With the Washington component of the company losing significant money, the remaining three Vegas are returned to Seattle.
Wreckage of the Renehan aircraft is found on a beach at Annette Island in January 1931. The 3 Vegas return to Alaska for the summer season, with Bob Ellis operating the Petersburg from Juneau and Gene Meyering flying the Sitka from Ketchikan. Clark Wings flies on-demand charters with the Wrangell. Seattle-Ketchikan-Juneau flight end on December 31.
The company, which represents the first significant effort to operate a real airline in Alaska, ceases operations on January 1, 1932. President Carman returns to the furniture business and, in March, Alaska-Washington Airways’ assets are purchased at a receiver’s sale by Juneau canning industry official and FBO operator Nick Bez, who reforms them into Alaska Southern Airways.
ALASKAN AIRVENTURES: United States (1982-1992). Airventures Associates, Inc. form this charter operation at Palmer in 1982 to provide passenger charter and flight-seeing services into the surrounding bush country. Employing float-equipped Cessna 185s and de Havil-land Canada DHC-2 Beavers, the company continues operations until 1991, when it becomes a victim of recession.
ALASKAN AIRWAYS: United States (1928-1932). In 1928, Carl Ben Eielson, who flew the first experimental Fairbanks-McGrath airmail service back in 1924, establishes Alaskan Airways. The company, owned by the Aviation Corporation (AVCO), which is also parent of American Airways, is an amalgamation of the charter operations of three FBOs — Noel Wien and Bennet and Rodebaugh, both based at Fairbanks, and Anchorage Air Transport.
Routes are flown with Fairchild 71s and other lightplanes from Fairbanks to Nome, Kotzebue, Point Barrow, and McGrath as well as points northwest of Anchorage.
En route to pick up furs from the icebound schooner Nanuk, stuck on the Siberian side of the Bering Strait, founder Eielson and mechanic Earl Borland are lost in a crash on November 9, 1929. The wreckage is not found until January 25, 1930.
Operations continue into 1932, by which time the company owns small frame hangars at Nome, Fairbanks, and Anchorage, plus eight Star mail contracts. In April, company pilot Joe Crosson makes the first recorded glacier landing in Alaska, alighting on Mount McKinley’s Muldrow Glacier.
Preparing to undertake services to the Orient, Pan American Airways (PAA) purchases the company from AVCO on September 1, merging it into its subsidiary, Pacific Alaska Airways, founded a scant five months earlier. All AA aircraft and the 40 employees, including the five pilots and manager S. E. “Robbie” Robbins, are transferred as well.
ALBANIAN AIRLINES MAK S. H.P. K.: R. R. Durrest Nr. 202, Tirana, Albania; Phone 355 (42) 28 461; Fax 355 (42) 42 857; Code LV; Year Founded 1992. Established at Tirana in April 1992 as Albania’s national carrier, this new entrant is a joint venture between the government-owned Albtransport and the Innsbruck-based carrier Tyrolean Airways, GmbH., which signs a technical assistance and management contract. Tyrolean officials Johann Messner and Josef Burger are named acting joint managing directors pending the appointment of a suitably qualified Albanian national.
Employing a de Havilland Canada DHC-8-100 and a DHC-8-300, both leased from Tyrolean, the company inaugurates scheduled services to Vienna in late July. Later in the year, flights are started linking the airline’s base with Rome, Zurich, Frankfurt, and Munich. Operations continue apace in 1993-1994. G. Esterhammer becomes managing director and is forced, by low traffic, to withdraw the DHC-8-300. Flights are suspended in August of the latter year.
The stagnant situation remains unchanged into 1995 and the decision is made to gamble on salvation through regional jetliner service. The Kuwaiti construction group M. A. Kharafi purchases majority shareholding. An Airbus Industrie A320-200 is leased in the fall and flights commence in October linking Tirana with Bologna, Munich, Skopje, Rome, and Istanbul.
The risky wager is unsuccessful and the company, out of money, is forced to again shut down in September 1996. It remains inactive for some months thereafter.
Following the withdrawal of Kharafi’s A320, the fleet is reformed in late 1997 and is provided with 3 secondhand Tupolev Tu-134As and 1 Tu-134B. Scheduled revenue service is resumed linking the company’s base with Bologna, Frankfurt, Istanbul, and Rome.
Service is maintained in 1998 and into 1999. In anticipation of air strikes by NATO countries against Serbian military targets in the campaign for an independent Kosovo, NATO, on March 24, halts all scheduled service in the Balkans by closing the airspace over Yugoslavia and surrounding countries. That evening, Operation Allied Force, the bombing attack on targets in Serbia and Kosovo, begins.
Albanian remains unable to operate scheduled service throughout the Kosovo crisis. It is, however, chartered by the UN to operate a number of refugee flights to destinations in Western Europe.
Regularly scheduled flights are quietly resumed during the summer and fall.
Four-time-per-week return service is launched on February 1, 2000 between Tirana and Trieste.
ALBANY AIR SERVICE: United States (1977-1978). Albany Air Service is established at Albany, New York, in 1977 to provide scheduled passenger and cargo services to New York via White Plains. Daily Beech 18 roundtrips are duly inaugurated, but can only be maintained into 1978.
ALBANY AIR SERVICE AND ATHENS AVIATION: United States (1964-1970). AAS and AA are set up at the two Georgian cities in the summer of 1964 to operate scheduled air taxi flights under both names. Employing 1 Beech 18 and 1 Piper PA-23 Apache, the company inaugurates revenue flights on September 7 from Albany to Atlanta and from Athens to Atlanta, Jefferson, Winder, and Gainesville.
Flights continue apace over the next four years and the fleet is upgraded by the addition of a Piper PA-32 Cherokee Six. In 1968, service to Albany is halted and the company is renamed Cherokee Airways.
World History
