skycub From United States of America, joined Apr 2012, 276 posts, RR: 1 Posted (11 months 4 weeks 18 hours ago) and read 1008 times:
The "AIR" listing was originally used as the aircraft for any flight not operated by Northwest Airlines mainline aircraft. Whether it was a Northwest Airlink commuter aircraft or a PSA jet flight being operated as a code-share. A Mesaba/Northwest Airlink Metroliner, a Big Sky Beechcraft and a PSA MD-80 all got the designation of "AIR."
Later Northwest timetables would differentiate between the Airlink commuter flights "AIR" and code-share jet flights (USAir, America West, Ansett) as "JET."
Somewhere along the line, it was broken down even further as "AIR," "JET" and "KLM." "KLM," representing, obviously, KLM-operated flights.
By the end of NW timetables, the actual aircraft type for all flights, Airlink, code-share, anything... was listed.
My opinions are my own. They are not representative of my employer, my union or my co-workers. They are all mine.
ATW definitely got a lot of Express I aircraft (I remember it being an early CRJ station), but wasn't it ground handled by Mesaba? Or was that just in later years?
Viscount724 From Switzerland, joined Oct 2006, 21460 posts, RR: 24 Reply 2, posted (11 months 4 weeks 2 hours ago) and read 714 times:
Quoting skycub (Reply 7): The "AIR" listing was originally used as the aircraft for any flight not operated by Northwest Airlines mainline aircraft. Whether it was a Northwest Airlink commuter aircraft or a PSA jet flight being operated as a code-share. A Mesaba/Northwest Airlink Metroliner, a Big Sky Beechcraft and a PSA MD-80 all got the designation of "AIR."
"AIR" would have only worked in the airline's own timetables. It wasn't a valid IATA code for distribution in industry schedules like the OAG and GDS systems. If you look at old OAGs from that period on the departedflights.com site it shows the aircraft type operating the flight.
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