Many local service carriers, flying to small communities, improved their image with jet aircraft and harnessed deregulation’s freedom to maintain a rapid pace to profitability. Piedmont Airlines was one of them.
Origins
Incorporated in North Carolina as an aircraft sales and service company on July 2, 1940, then-named Piedmont Aviation received Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) approval to operate as the only federally licensed facility between Washington and Atlanta. Although its aspirations to begin scheduled air service to destinations in the southeast looked promising when it was awarded a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity to operate to fly to four cities on April 4, 1947, an appeal by an unsuccessful applicant thwarted its efforts until December, when the CAB once again affirmed its decision, enabling Piedmont Airlines to establish itself ss a division of Piedmont Aviation.
It inaugurated service with the 21-passenger Douglas DC-3 the following year, on February 20, between Wilmington, North Carolina, and Cincinnati, Ohio, and covered all its authorized routes by May 14.
Two years after the CAB renewed its certificate for another seven years in “special recognition” of its outstanding service, on May 26, 1952, it carried its millionth passenger since it began operating- the first local service airline to do so. It planted larger, more sedentary roots in 1956 when it completed the construction of an office building and hangar across from Winston Salem’s Smith Reynolds Airport.
A second aircraft type-in this case, the faster, larger-capacity turboprop Fokker F.27 Friendship- was placed into service between Cincinnati and Wilmington in November of 1958.
Because the larger-capacity, longer-range piston airliners, such as the Douglas DC-6 and the Lockheed Constellation that the trunk carriers operated were optimized for larger city service, they were soon eager to relinquish virtual puddle-jumper routes of 100 or so miles to smaller carriers that were better suited to them.
“An understanding was reached between many companies in which the local airlines took over a package of routes and aircraft from the trunks when the transfer was mutually suitable to both parties,” according to R. E. G. Davies in Airlines of the United States Since 1914 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998, p. 408).
Taking advantage of the situation, Piedmont was able to significantly expand its route system.
“Piedmont’s authority to expand southward as far as Atlanta strengthened its ability to provide the feeder service from points in Carolina through the Atlanta hub, and the adverse effects on trunk airline service in the area was negligible because the main purpose of the trunks (Eastern and Delta) was to link major cities,” Davies continues (Ibid, p. 408). “Piedmont, in this case, linked a large city with some smaller ones.”
A third aircraft type, the 44-passenger Martin 404, was added to the fleet on December 4, 1961, after Piedmont purchased 17 of the piston-liners from TWA for $3.25 million, only two months before it retired its DC-3s on the 15th anniversary of its first flight.
A 50% route expansion also occurred that year when CAB authorizations enabled it to inaugurate service to several cities in nine states and Washington, D. C., connecting them with Baltimore and Atlanta.
These new routes accelerated its growth and increased its passenger figures: 100,000 single-month boardings in October of 1964 and one million annual passengers at the end of the year, first-time records for the company.
A 1966 order for ten Fairchild-Hiller FH-227Bs enabled it to replace its earlier F.27s, but this rapid expansion quickly outpaced its capacity.
“(Piedmont) decided…that the stretched F.27 was still not big enough to keep pace with its sustained traffic growth, and on August 16, 1967, signed, amid some surprise, a letter-of-intent for ten Japanese-built Nihon YS-11A 60-seaters, powered, like the FH-227Bs, by Rolls Royce Dart 10 propeller-turbines,” according to Davies (Ibid, p. 405).
It placed the first, “The Cherry Blossom Pacemaker,” into service the following year, on May 19.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Piedmont was awarded additional routes to cities such as Louisville, Norfolk, Knoxville, Columbus, Washington, New York-LaGuardia, Nashville, Memphis, and Chicago-Midway.
But increased capacity constituted only one side of its equipment acquisition formula. The other was speed. And toward that end, it made a six-firm and six-optioned order for 90-passenger Boeing 737-200 jets, then the largest one placed by a local service carrier, on January 20, 1966. Two 727-100s were leased the following year until the 737s were delivered, enabling it to inaugurate aircraft N734N, “Piedmont Pacemaker,” into service on August 1, 1968.
A decade later, in 1977, it carried more than four million annual passengers for the first time.
Deregulation
Piedmont took advantage of deregulation by carving its niche in locations where little to no competition existed, connecting them with larger cities that did. Inherent in its philosophy was establishing smaller, more negotiable, secondary-city flight centers, providing self-feed that could only profitably occur with smaller-capacity, multiple-daily, twin-jet flights. Frequency, especially for time-sensitive business travelers, was a competitive edge.
In 1979, after its first year of plying deregulated skies, it carried 5.4 million passengers and posted an $11.1 million net profit. The comparative figures for 1981 were 7.2 million passengers and a $32.6 million net profit. Aside from its primary Charlotte hub, it established secondary traffic centers in Atlanta, Dayton, Greensboro, Newark, Norfolk, Richmond, Roanoke, the Tri-Cities, and Wilmington, operating more than 500 daily departures to 45 destinations in 20 states and Washington, D. C. from them as far afield as Boston, Chicago, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Denver, Miami, and New Orleans.
The 1982 opening of a $64 million terminal in Charlotte enabled it to establish a hub system whose spokes, stretching to numerous eastern and midwestern airports, provided feed. A second hub in Dayton quickly followed on July 1 of that year, and the 737 Baby Boeing became the workhorse of its fleet.
It highlighted its rapid expansion in its system timetables. In its October 31, 1982 edition, for example, it listed its “new and additional service” as Columbia-Charlotte, Dayton-Flint, Dayton-Newark, Dayton-Orlando, New York/LaGuardia-Norfolk, and New York/LaGuardia-Richmond.
“We make it easy to get around to over 80 cities,” it advertised. This encompassed those as far north as Boston, as far south as Miami, and as far west as Denver.
From both LaGuardia and Newark, it offered connections to 46 destinations, with nonstops to Boston, Charleston (West Virginia), Charlotte, Cincinnati, Dayton, Greenbrier/White Sulphur Springs, Greensboro, Norfolk, Raleigh/Durham, Richmond, Roanoke, and Winston-Salem.
Its timetable urged passengers to “fly Piedmont and see the worlds: Disney World, Circus World, and Sea World. Piedmont can fly you to all of them with our service to Orlando.”
Its all-jet fleet was designated by flight numbers—that is, flights 50 to 99 were 727-200s, flights 600 to 699 were 727-100s, and flights 200 to 599 were 737-200s.
In 1983, it established a third hub in Baltimore and acquired Henson Aviation, a subsidiary that provided turboprop commuter service as “The Piedmont Regional Airline.” Carrying 11.7 million passengers that year, it became the tenth-largest US carrier.
After acquiring former PSA Pacific Southwest Airlines and Western 727-200s and refurbishing them, it was able to spread its wings to the West Cost for the first time with flights from Dayton and Charlotte to Los Angeles on April 1, 1984, and offer a first-class cabin. Configured for 12 first and 134 coach seats, they also introduced an audio entertainment system.
The date proved a particularly busy one. To continue its small market expansion, it purchased a dozen 65-passenger Fokker F.28-1000 Fellowship regional jets from Garuda Indonesian Airlines for $3 million each and placed the first in service that day, making it the first US operator of the type. So versatile was it on short, low-density sectors between small communities and those that fed its hubs that it ultimately took up its eight options for them.
Operating more than 250 daily flights “to big cities, to small towns, to popular destinations, and to places the other airlines forgot,” it dubbed itself “Piedmont: The Up-and-Coming Airline.”
US Major Status and Merger
Exceeding $1 billion in annual sales, transporting 14.2 million passengers, and achieving a 33% growth rate in 1984, it was redesignated a “major carrier” and was presented with Air Transport World’s “Airline of the Year” award.
As the world’s largest 737-200 operator, it succeeded the type with the higher-capacity, CFM56-powered 737-300 and 737-400, serving as the launch customer for the latter version.
Its growth continued. In 1985, it established an intra-state Florida Shuttle route system, with 68 daily departures to ten Sunshine State destinations, and acquired Empire Airlines, giving it a fourth hub in Syracuse, 11 new cities, and a fleet of 85-passenger F.28-4000s.
Spreading its wings to Europe, it inaugurated its first widebody transatlantic Boeing 767-200ER service from Charlotte to London on June 15, 1987.
“Piedmont has opened a new English Channel,” it advertised. “Piedmont now offers daily nonstop service from our hub in Charlotte to London-Gatwick Airport. This new 767 service means a new era in convenience for travelers all over the southeast.”
But that new era was about to operate under a new name: USAir. So attractive had Piedmont become because of its high-quality service, extensive route network, and profitability that USAir acquired it, and the Department of Transportation approved the merger on October 30, 1987. Two years later, on October 4, it operated its last flight under the Piedmont name.
