Exit Smiling : PSA Fades Into USAir After 39 Years of Winging It in the Skies
In November, 1986, Pacific Southwest Airlines Chairman Paul Barkley told a group of airline industry analysts that “strategically sound, mid-sized airlines” such as PSA could survive an ongoing wave of airline consolidations.
Barkley also complained that a “rumor mill” had cast regional air carriers as “helpless sparrows awaiting the kill by a pack of circling cats.”
On Dec. 8, 1986--shortly after American Airlines grabbed Air Cal--USAir Group pounced on PSA. Early Saturday morning, PSA--which began commercial flights on May 6, 1949, with a single, leased DC-3 airplane--will disappear from the skies.
PSA’s last “Smileliner” will leave Los Angeles at 11:15 p.m. tonight and arrive in San Francisco at 1:15 a.m. Saturday. Thereafter, PSA’s flights will be merged into the larger, nationwide USAir system.
Later today, airline crews will start removing more than 500 PSA signs and logos at 28 airports in the West and replacing them with USAir’s corporate logo. One crew will spend the day removing the large PSA sign on the airline’s corporate headquarters building at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field.
PSA crews have spent the past six months wiping the smiles off of the airline’s “Smileliners” and repainting them with USAir’s maroon color scheme.
USAir has been eliminating other vestiges as well. A hot-air balloon bearing the airline’s logo has been destroyed and PSA’s long-standing advertisement at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium has been painted over. During coming weeks, the PSA logo will be removed from the sky tower at Sea World of San Diego.
PSA passengers already have noticed some changes. Members of PSA’s frequent flyer program have been enrolled in the USAir program, and new travel cards are being mailed out.
On Feb. 18, USAir trimmed back PSA’s high-frequency schedule between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Later this month, USAir will eliminate PSA’s flights to Cabo San Lucas at the tip of Baja California.
Lighthearted Approach
On May 2, USAir will begin adding flights that link PSA’s extensive West Coast system with USAir’s largely eastern flight network. However, USAir, which has a major hub in Pittsburgh, does not have immediate plans to establish a similar hub in the West, according to spokesman David Shipley.
PSA, known for its lighthearted approach to customer service, has allowed its employees to engage in a bit of whimsy during the airline’s waning days. The airline will be passing out “final day of service certificates” today and the last-flight passengers will receive free champagne. Crews are free to “improvise whatever they feel is appropriate” for last day.
Some flight attendants have been wearing the controversial red-hot miniskirts that PSA introduced during the late 1960s.
Nancy Price, a PSA flight attendant for 18 years, acknowledged that she had “forgotten how short the miniskirt really was.”
“Wearing the micro-minis is a good way to get our minds away from what happens on Friday when we lose our identity,” she said.
PSA’s 39-year history was marred by a 1978 accident over San Diego that killed 144 people and a crash last December near Paso Robles, Calif., allegedly stemming from an on-board shooting, that took 44 lives. In all, the airline carried more than 170 million passengers on more than 2.4 million flights that covered 960 million miles. It boarded nearly 12 million passengers during 1987.
