Express One International

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Express One International (IATA: EO, ICAO: LHN, and Callsign: Longhorn) ^[1] was a cargo airline based in Irving, Texas, USA. It operated all-cargo contract charter services on behalf of the United States Postal Service from Indianapolis and for DHL. It also operated domestic and international cargo services and charter passenger flights throughout the USA, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean, and specialised in wet and dry leasing of aircraft.

1 History
2 Fleet
3 External links
4 References

[edit] History

The airline was established and started operations in 1983 by Alinda and Jim Wikert as Jet East International flying one Boeing 727-100 on a contract from DHL. At its peak, the company was flying freight in more than 20 Boeing 727s and passengers in several Douglas DC-9s from hubs in Austin, TX, Indianapolis, IN, Atlantic City, NJ, and Brussels, Belgium when in 2000 it was purchased by Orchard Capital.

2001 was a difficult year for the company and by July several key contracts expired without renewal. A severe blow was dealt in August 2001 when the United States Postal Service cancelled its contracts with its existing carriers and turned these duties over to FedEx. The company saw a short reprieve when Emery Worldwide suddenly eliminated their own airline in favor of using contract carriers and Express One received a short-term contract to carry freight until the end of 2001.

Having secured little new business by the end of the year, the company removed most of their aircraft from service and furloughed the vast majority of their employees to conserve resources, however this was not enough to prevent them from filing for bankruptcy and ceasing operations by mid-2002.

That same year, their name, logo, property and operating certificate were purchased by an investment group headed by Richard Byers and Larry Brinker and the company was moved to Orlando Sanford International Airport in Florida.