Fading Smile

USAir is putting on a happy face about its takeover of Pacific Southwest Airlines earlier this month. “Now our smile is even wider,” USAir literature claims. But the Washington D.C.-based line has its work cut out for it to persuade PSA loyalists that they will enjoy the same convenience and California service under the new banner.

Gone are the whimsical painted smiles from the faces of the former PSA jets. The PSA logos have all been replaced by USAir. No more good-natured high jinks such as impromptu Halloween parties and admonitions to parents to put oxygen masks on their children “if they’ve been good” or directives to “adjust your seats to their uncomfortable upright position.”

USAir definitely is a more conservative organization, one USAir official said, partly because of its eastern roots and because “when you are larger, you have more regulations and standardized work rules.”

PSA is the last of several California-based carriers to be absorbed into national lines. USAir had claimed there would be no sacrifices in PSA’s California schedule, but there already have been changes. The frequency of Los Angeles-San Francisco flights, a PSA mainstay, has been reduced, and USAir is adding flights linking its new West Coast system with the East. An example is nonstop service between Las Vegas and Atlantic City, Pittsburgh and Indianapolis.

Airlines do not run on nostalgia or regional pride. USAir will schedule and maintain flights that customers demand and support. Still, many California air commuters will have to be shown that the national carriers are willing to pay the special attention to California needs that they got from California lines based in California.