Хьюз Эйрвест: История западной авиакомпании

Defunct regional airline of the United States (1968–1980)

Hughes Air Corporation, doing business as Hughes Airwest, was a local service carrier from 1970 to 1980 in Western United States. It was backed by Howard Hughes' Summa Corporation. Its original name in 1968 was Air West and the air carrier was owned by Nick Bez. Hughes Airwest flew routes in the western U. S. and to several destinations in Mexico and Canada; its headquarters were on the grounds of San Francisco International Airport (SFO) in unincorporated San Mateo County, California. With distinctive all yellow aircraft, the company slogan was Top Banana in the West; Hughes Airwest was purchased by Republic Airlines in 1980, which in turn was merged into Northwest Airlines in 1986. Northwest Airlines was then merged into Delta Air Lines in 2010.

The original headquarters were in two buildings in downtown San Mateo, California, on the San Francisco peninsula. Its new headquarters were located in San Mateo. The airline scheduled the move to a new headquarters in late August 1973; the complex was on a hill overlooking San Mateo and San Francisco Bay. The airline relocated two departments from the offices at San Francisco International Airport: flight control and reservations.

On the evening of Sunday, June 6, 1971, Flight 706, a Douglas DC 9 31 collided in mid air with a U. S. Marine Corps F 4B fighter over southern California near Duarte. All 49 on the airliner and the F 4 pilot were killed; the sole survivor was the F 4 radar intercept officer. Flight 706 had departed Los Angeles for Seattle, with five intermediate stops, the first in Salt Lake City.

Two months after the hijacking by D. B. Cooper of Northwest Orient flight 305, Hughes Airwest was the target of a copycat hijacker in early 1972. After boarding Flight 800 at McCarran airport in Las Vegas in late morning on Thursday, January 20, 23 year old Richard Charles LaPoint claimed he had a bomb while the plane was on the taxiway and demanded $50,000 cash, two parachutes, and a helmet. When these demands were met, 51 Reno bound passengers and two flight attendants were released; the DC 9 departed eastward toward Denver, followed by two F 111 aircraft of the U. S. Air Force from nearby Nellis AFB. The parachutes were high visibility and equipped with emergency locator devices. Without a coat and in cowboy boots, the hijacker bailed out from the lower aft door over the treeless plains of northeastern Colorado in mid afternoon. LaPoint was apprehended a few hours later, with minor injuries and very cold. The plane, with two pilots and a flight attendant on board, landed safely at Denver's Stapleton airport at 2:55 p. m. MST. the Vietnam veteran and former U. S. Army paratrooper was sentenced to forty years, but served less than eight, and was released from a halfway house in 1979; he died at age 60 in his native New Hampshire in 2008.