Ozark Air Lines

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Ozark Air Lines

IATA OZ	ICAO OZA	Callsign OZARK
Founded		September 25, 1950
Hubs		Lambert-Saint Louis International Airport
Fleet size		DC9-10: 7 DC9-30: 36 DC9-40: 3 MD80: 4
Destinations		Ozark Mainline Cities: 57 Ozark Midwest Cities: 21
Parent company		Ozark Holdings, Inc.
Headquarters		St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Key people		Laddie Hamilton (President 1950-1959) Joseph A. Fitzgerald (President 1959-1963) Floyd Jones (Acting President 1963-1964) Thomas L. Grace (President 1964-1971) Edward J. Crane (President 1971-1986) Lester L. Cox (Chairman of Board 1972-1986)

Ozark Air Lines is a former commercial airline that operated in the United States from 1950 until 1986, when it was purchased by Trans World Airlines.

In 1998, the rights to the airline's name were purchased by William E. Stricker of Columbia, Missouri. Starting in February 2000, the reformed Ozark Air Lines provided service from Columbia Regional Airport to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and Chicago. A year later the company ceased operations and sold its assets to the now-bankrupt Great Plains Airlines, based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. [1]

1 History
2 Trivia
3 Destinations 1986
4 Fleet History
5 External links

[edit] History

Ozark Airlines origins date back to September 1943 when it was founded in Springfield, Missouri and it began operations in January 1945 with service between Springfield and St. Louis using Beech 17 Staggerwing aircraft. Those were replaced by Cessna AT-17 Bobcat in the late 1945s. But a license by the CAB was not forthcoming therefore operations had to be stopped. Another airline, Parks Air Lines got the operating license so in 1950 Ozark took over Parks Air Lines, to include some Douglas DC-3. Flights from St. Louis to Chicago soon followed and by 1955 the airline had 13 DC-3s operating to over 25 destinations. The main hub for Ozark was Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.

In 1960 the fleet was upgraded to turboprops with the introduction of the Fokker F27 Friendship and to increase capacity the Martin 4-0-4 was introduced in 1964. The pure jet age came to Ozark with the introduction of the Douglas DC-9-10 and with those the network was expanded to include: Denver, Indianapolis, Louisville, Washington, New York, Miami, Tampa and Orlando. Soon the DC-3s and F27s were replaced by the Fairchild Hiller FH-227 until October 1978 when the fleet was composed of DC-9s only.

The DC-9-10s were augmented over the years with DC-9-31/32 and DC-9-40s until 1984 when the McDonnell Douglas MD-82 was introduced. Ozark was not in position to compete head to head with the other St. Louis resident airline, TWA who, instead of fighting Ozark, bought it in February 1986 and thus Ozark ceased to exist as an independent company on 27 October 1986.

[edit] Trivia

Starting in the mid to late 1960s until the late 1980s Ozark Airlines Reservations Department utilized a special toll-free WX telephone prefix in New Jersey which could be reached only in certain areas of the state by dialing 0 and asking the New Jersey Bell operator to connect to Ozark's WX number which was WX-8300. The number could not be dialed directly by the customer and was only available to certain telephone exchanges where WX was available. The Former Bell System telephone companies completely phased out the WX service in the early 1990s.