Midway Airlines was a United States airline based in Chicago, Illinois. It was founded on August 6, 1976, by investor Kenneth T. Carlson and joined by Irving T. Tague and William B. Owens on October 13, 1976, filing with the Civil Aeronautics Board (CA) for an airline operating certificate. Although it received its operating certificate from the CAB prior to the passage of the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978, it is widely recognized as the first post-deregulation start-up. The airline commenced operations on October 31, 1979.
The airline was intended to breathe new life into Midway International Airport, then called Chicago Midway Airport, which had lost most of its scheduled flights to O'Hare International Airport. The airline took its name from this airport. Midway Airlines and the revitalized airport were advertised as a trouble-free alternative to O'Hare, and both of these spurred re-development and growth on Chicago's South Side. The airport was billed as a convenient ten- to fifteen-minute drive from downtown Chicago.
The airline went bankrupt in 1991 and was dissolved in 1992. A group of investors bought the airline's name and started a new separate company called Midway Airlines, which flew from 1993 to 2003.
History
Following the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, Midway first emerged as a discount carrier. It was noted for its low fares and ease of connections at Midway Airport. The airline purchased three Douglas DC-9s from Trans World Airlines and began service on October 31, 1979, flying to Cleveland, Ohio's Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport, Kansas City, Missouri, and Detroit, Michigan. The scheduled service was an instant success. In 1980, Midway bought five more DC-9s and added flights to St. Louis, Missouri, New York City's La Guardia Airport, and Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C.; it also shifted its Cleveland service to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. The airline also briefly served Minneapolis, Minnesota, but dropped this service shortly after it began.
During the 1980s, the airline adopted a combination of all-leather two-by-two seating to business markets and all-coach seating to vacation destinations. It eventually dropped this idea due to the impact on revenue caused by eliminating seats, and the confusion it created in the minds of connecting passengers.
The carrier expanded into the Caribbean via the purchase in 1984 of the assets of Air Florida, which had gone into bankruptcy. It proved to be good mix of business and vacation travel revenue. Midway flourished under the leadership of David R. Hinson, who was its chief executive officer from 1985 to 1991. In 1984, Boeing 737-200 flights to the Caribbean were being operated by subsidiary Midway Express while DC-9 domestic jet service was flown Midway Metrolink.
In 1986 the company assisted in setting up a successful regional affiliate, Midway Connection, as a feeder operating commuter turboprop aircraft with service to small communities in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan. This carrier was established following the bankruptcy of Chicago Air, a regional carrier which attempted a similar, but independent, feeder operation earlier in 1986.
On a June 1988 weekday, Midway scheduled 116 nonstop flights into Midway Airport from 25 airports, along with 75 Midway Connection nonstops from 17 other airports. They flew Chicago Midway (MDW) - Miami (MIA) - Saint Croix (STX) - St. Thomas (STT) round trip as well as Chicago Midway (MDW) - Fort Lauderdale (FLL) - Nassau (NAS) round trip ; aside from those, all Chicago flights were nonstop to and from Midway Airport. Midway Airlines′ peak year was 1989, when it flew 10.1 billion revenue passenger-kilometers, compared to 0.6 billion in 1981.
Midway Airlines was noted for friendly employees and attentive service, and its Chicago South Side passengers were fiercely loyal to their hometown airline. Some of the signature in-flight service items were after-dinner chocolate wafer mints and hot hand towels for the entire cabin, both of which had originally caught on with Midway's business clientele.
In June 1989, Midway Airlines agreed to purchase a hub operation at Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for $100 million along with $100 million worth of DC-9 jets from the bankrupt Eastern Air Lines. The company began hub operations in Philadelphia in November 1989. However, less than a year later, competition with the US Airways Philadelphia hub, coupled with rising jet fuel prices following the August 1990 IraqI invasion of Kuwait, caused the company to quit its Philadelphia hub. In October 1990 it sold its Philadelphia assets to USAir for $67.5 million.