In the saga of mergers that have characterized the US airline industry over the decades, plenty of airlines have disappeared – subsumed into a larger merger partner. One such airline is American West. I was looking for some old shots for another project and came across a bunch of shots of this airline. It merged with USAir and then ultimately into American Airlines. It had a more interesting color scheme than is usually the case these days so I figured I would pop a few shots of their jets into a post.
I believe one of these jets is a retro scheme as part of the American Airlines retro jet program. The rest, though, are from the days when the airline was an active competitor. A search on the registrations of some of these jets would have, until recently shown them as still active in the American Airlines fleet. Now, with most of the fleets on the ground and given the age of some of these jets, I suspect a lot of them won’t be making it back in to service.
