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| Founded | July 20, 1931 (1931-07-20) (asBoston-Maine Airways) | ||||||
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| Commenced operations | August 11, 1933 (1933-08-11) (asBoston-Maine Airways) | ||||||
| Ceased operations | August 1, 1972 (1972-08-01) (merged intoDelta Air Lines) | ||||||
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| Destinations | SeeDestinations | ||||||
| Parent company | Storer Broadcasting(1965–1972) | ||||||
| Headquarters | Boston,Massachusetts | ||||||
| Founders | |||||||
Northeast Airlines was atrunk carrier, a scheduled airline based inBoston,Massachusetts, originally founded in 1931 asBoston-Maine Airways that chiefly operated in theNortheastern United States, and later toCanada,Florida,the Bahamas,Bermuda and other cities. It was notably small and unprofitable relative to other trunk carriers, being less than half the size, by revenue, than the next biggest trunk in 1971. Northeast was acquired by and merged intoDelta Air Lines in August 1972.[1]
From 1975 onward,Air New England was essentially a reincarnation of many of the New England routes of Northeast Airlines, complete with the aircraft Northeast used to fly those routes and Northeast's IATA code.
The airline began as Boston-Maine Airways,[2] founded as aPan Am contract carrier on July 20, 1931, by theBoston and Maine Railroad andMaine Central Railroad, flying from Boston toBangor viaPortland. It flew only sporadically until August 11, 1933, when National Airways began to operate its flights under contract. National also operated Central Vermont Airways, a subsidiary of theCentral Vermont Railway, and the two carriers together had a network across New England to New Hampshire, Vermont, and Montreal.[1]Amelia Earhart andEugene Vidal were among the co-founders of National, and Earhart was a prominent salesperson for the airline in its early years.[3] National initially operatedStinson Airliners, and switched to a fleet of 10-passengerLockheed Electras in November 1936.[3]
On May 31, 1939, Boston-Maine was certificated to be a United States scheduled airline by theCivil Aeronautics Authority (CAA) under the terms of theCivil Aeronautics Act of 1938, which granted certificates to airlines that had been providing bona fide scheduled service prior to the Act. The CAA noted that Boston-Maine was 25% owned each by the Boston and Maine Railroad and Maine Central Railroads.[4] The next year, the airline regulatory functions of the CAA would be moved to theCivil Aeronautics Board (CAB), which would closely regulate Boston-Maine/Northeast as atrunk carrier for the rest of its existence.
The name Northeast Airlines was adopted on November 19, 1940, which was duly approved by the CAB, including the required signature of PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt.[5] During World War II Northeast pioneered transatlantic service for the military under contract from theU.S. Army Air Forces.[1] In June 1944, the CAB approved the takeover of moribundMayflower Airlines, giving Northeast routes toCape Cod,Nantucket andMartha's Vineyard from Boston.[6][7] After the war, Northeast began hourly service between Boston and New York usingDC-4s.[3] Northeast applied for authorization to operate passenger service across the Atlantic but were stymied by theCivil Aeronautics Board, which in June 1945 awarded the routes toPan American World Airways,American Export Airlines andTWA.[8]
In 1956 Northeast began service toWashington National Airport, and received a temporary certificate to serve Florida, for which the airline purchased a fleet of newDC-6Bs. Northeast ordered tenVickers Viscounts in the late 1950s and used them until financial problems in the early 1960s forced the company to return them to the manufacturer. Beginning on December 17, 1959, Northeast became one of the early jet operators, flying a leased TWABoeing 707-331 round trip between New York and Miami.[1] In 1960 Northeast leased sixConvair 880s and flew them to Florida for several years.
| USD mm | 1962[9] | 1963[10] | 1964[11] | 1965[12] | 1966[13] | 1967[14] | 1968[15] | 1969[16] | 1970[17] | 1971[18] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Op revenue | 51.39 | 43.91 | 42.70 | 48.21 | 62.27 | 78.58 | 111.71 | 122.09 | 122.84 | 126.00 |
| Of which subsidy | 0.99 | 3.44 | 3.63 | 2.20 | 2.82 | |||||
| Op profit (loss) | (6.36) | (8.64) | (0.99) | 0.21 | 0.43 | (3.03) | 0.86 | (17.07) | (4.70) | (8.84) |
| Net profit (loss) | (8.24) | (15.30) | 2.88 | 0.47 | 0.13 | (6.53) | (2.42) | (28.84) | (10.72) | (13.99) |
| Op margin | -12.4% | -19.7% | -2.3% | 0.4% | 0.7% | -3.9% | 0.8% | -14.0% | -3.8% | -7.0% |
| Net margin | -16.0% | -34.8% | 6.7% | 1.0% | 0.2% | -8.3% | -2.2% | -23.6% | -8.7% | -11.1% |
| Subsidy/op revenue | 2.2% | 8.0% | 7.5% | 3.5% | 3.6% |
Howard Hughes acquired control of the airline in 1962. The airline's temporary Miami route authority was terminated by a CAB decision that year, and Hughes decided to exit from the company, selling control to a trustee in 1964.[1] Northeast launched an aggressive campaign against the CAB's decision, and got a permanent Florida certificate in 1965.[3] In 1965 the airline was bought byStorer Broadcasting, who tried to rejuvenate Northeast in 1966 with a new marketing campaign and new aircraft.[1] Northeast ordered a fleet ofBoeing 727-100s for their Florida routes, andMcDonnell Douglas DC-9-30s andFairchild-Hiller FH-227s for shorter routes. These "Yellowbirds" featured a new yellow and white livery. In 1966 Northeast was the launch customer for theBoeing727-200, which they began flying in December 1967.[1] Except for Florida their network was all north and east ofWashington National Airport until 1969 when they added three 727 nonstops between Miami and Los Angeles, with Fort Lauderdale getting a short-lived LAX nonstop soon after (fuel stops were sometimes required on these transcontinental 727 flights). Northeast obtained rights to fly between Miami and Montreal in 1967, followed by rights to serve the Bahamas in 1968, and rights to serve Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Bermuda in 1969, along with a new Miami-Los Angeles route authority.[3]
Northeast was therunt of the trunks. In 1971, the largestlocal service carrier,Allegheny Airlines, had operating revenue over 40% bigger than that of Northeast, while the next smallest trunk,National, had significantly more than twice as much revenue. The largest trunk,United, had revenue over twelve times that of Northeast.[19] As George C. Eads said about Northeast in his definitive book onlocal service carriers (the next tier of airlines down from the trunks in the CAB'scategorization of airlines), "Although classified as a trunk, since it was certificated under the grandfather provisions of the Civil Aeronautics Act, it has always resembled a local service carrier with a few trunk routes appended."[20] Like Local Service Carriers, Northeast needed government subsidies. Despite subsidies, it had a long history of incredibly poor financial results (see nearby table). Some of that had to do with its route network, as Eads said. But some of it was self-inflicted. In 1968 Northeast, for some reason, ordered eightLockheed L-1011s which were to be delivered in a 268 seat configuration. The total order was to cost $128mm including spares.[15] In early 1970, following another abysmal set of financial results in 1969, Northeast cancelled the order, taking a $3.6mm charge against 1969 to do so.[16]
| Destination | 1970 Population |
|---|---|
| Bar Harbor, Maine* | 3,716 |
| Lewiston, Maine | 41,779 |
| Rockland, Maine* | 8,505 |
| Waterville, Maine | 18,192 |
| Keene, New Hampshire | 20,467 |
| Laconia, New Hampshire | 14,888 |
| Lebanon, New Hampshire* | 9,725 |
| Berlin, New Hampshire | 15,256 |
| Montpelier, Vermont | 8,609 |
| Newport, Vermont | 4,664 |
Northeast also wrote off its three year old FH-227s in 1969, the circumstances providing insight into the problems that plagued the airline. Northeast originally had seven FH-227s, delivered in 1966 to replace DC-3s.[21] One (N380NE) crashed in Lebanon, NH asFlight 946 in 1968, leaving six (N374NE thru N379NE). But in 1969, as its finances deteriorated, Northeast pulled out of ten New England airports, grounding the FH-227s and taking a write-down on them.[16][22] The ten airports were for small New England points (the biggest of these, Auburn-Lewiston Airport, also being only 28 nautical miles from theairport at Portland, Maine). Of the ten points, seven of them have, as of 2024, no form of commercial air service, while the other three haveCape Air service which flies aircraft in the 10-seat class, yet Northeast served them with 44-seat FH-227s. Every trunk airline started with small points on their network (some just for the purposes of refueling), but over time, most of them shifted these tolocal service carriers or otherwise abandoned them.[23] Northeast still had these small points on its network in 1969.
That wasn’t the end of FH-227s for Northeast. It was able to walk away from some of the New England points by turning them over toMohawk Airlines, which thought it could do better. Mohawk then had a disastrous strike in 1971 (which ultimately forced it to merge with Allegheny in 1972), after which it could no longer support Keene service. The CAB forced Northeast back into some of these points (like Keene, NH) and it had to pull two FH-227s out of storage, leaving three still stored with one leased out.[18][24]
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At the end of 1969, following a long period of financial difficulties, Northeast announced its intention to merge withNorthwest Airlines. The merger was approved by both the CAB and President Richard Nixon in 1970, but it was conditional upon relinquishing the Miami-Los Angeles route. Northwest terminated the merger negotiations in March 1971, and Northeast announced a new merger plan withDelta Air Lines the following month. The Delta merger was approved in May 1972, with the same condition that Delta could not operate the Miami-Los Angeles route.[3] The merger was completed in August 1972.[1] Note the delays between each merger announcement and final disposition. The CAB process took a long time, during which the company continued to lose a lot of money.
The airline'sIATA code wasNE.
Broadly-speaking, there were two legacies from Northeast:
Nominally, Delta took over all of Northeast, including some (but not all) of the New England routes that caused Northeast so many problems; the CAB did not require that Delta them all.[25] For a couple of years, Delta operated ex-Northeast FH-227s, at least the five that had not been leased out, the only passenger turboprop Delta operated directly. TheDelta Flight Museum has pictures of FH-227s in Delta livery.[26] Delta’s July 1974 schedule shows Lebanon, Keene, New Bedford, Hyannis, Martha’s Vinyard and Nantucket on-line,[27] and gone in July 1975.[28] However, in 1974, the CAB certificated Air New England (ANE), to that point a commuter/air taxi operator, specifically to operate the former problematic New England Northeast destinations with “big” aircraft, which it did from 1975.[29] Delta lent ANE the money to buy the ex-Northeast FH-227s (and another loan to help ANE to transition to certificated status)[30] and N374NE thru N379NE duly appeared in Air New England’s fleet.[31] Air New England was in some ways a partially reconstituted Northeast Airlines, at least insofar as New England routes were concerned. From 1975, when Air New England took over the routes, until the 1981 when it ceased operations, ANE was in significant financial distress notwithstanding CAB subsidies that reached up to 25% of ANE’s annual revenues. In this respect, at least, the Northeast Airlines tradition lived on.
Northeast’s lasting impact on Delta was that it was Delta’s entrée into Boston and points north, plus the Northeast to Florida routes, and routes to Bermuda and Bahamas. These are the bits that Delta wanted. This was the origin of Delta’s presence in these markets. Northeast also contributed theBoeing 727-100 and727-200 to Delta's fleet, types Delta did not operate prior to acquiring Northeast. Delta used these types as the workhorses of their fleet in the 1970s and 1980s and at one time was the world's largest operator of the Boeing 727-200.[32]
Northeast Airlines served the following destinations during its existence:[33]
An asterisk (*) denotes this airport is no longer served by scheduled air service.
Prop aircraft
Turboprop aircraft
Jet aircraft
A series of crashes damaged the airline's image:
The above incidents resulted in a total of 92 fatalities.
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