With the recent merger of American and US Airways, there are three legacy carriers remaining in the US. Curious as to FlightAware’s member’s opinions, I thought I would establish a poll to see what everyone’s favorite legacy carrier is. Please vote and explain the reason for your vote in the discussion.
Personally, my vote goes to Delta because of their seatback inflight entertainment, generally comfortable cabins, friendly crew and BISCOFF COOKIES! I must give AA and UA credit, though, because on my last flights with them the cabin crews were stellar.
You need to redo your poll or your explanation. You give three choices yet your explanation says you want to see what everyone’s favorite major airline is. The poll, if you are basing it on only the recently merged airlines, is correct. However, if you want to know everyone’s favorite major airline (assuming you mean only USA based airlines) then you need to include Southwest, and, to be really complete even though you can’t fly them as a pax, FedEx and UPS because they are both major airlines.
Need to add two more legacy carrier: Alaska and Hawaiian
Wikipedia says a legacy airline “is an airline that had established interstate routes by the time of the route liberalization which was permitted by the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 and was thus directly affected by that act.” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_carrier)
I actually disagree with this. My belief is that a legacy carrier is one that was certified by the Civil Aeronautics Board to operate flights that are in the public convenience and necessity prior to the passage of the Airliner Deregulation Act of 1978 and (with a couple of exceptions) operated interstate flights. These airlines would include
Trunk Lines
American
Braniff (the original one, no long operating)
Continental (now United)
Delta
Eastern (no long operating)
National (merged into Pan American (original))
Northeast (merged into Delta)
Northwest (merged into Delta)
TWA (part of American)
United
Western (merged into Delta)
The following are not mentioned in the Wikipedia article as legacy but I feel they should be
Local Service Airlines (all now defunct except as noted)
Hughes AirWest (merged into Republic)
Ozark (merged into TWA)
Republic Airlines (merged into Northwest)
Piedmont (the original one that was merged into USAir)
Frontier (the original one - eventually purchased by Continental)
Air New England (defunct)
Texas International (merged into Continental)
Other
Hawaiian
Aloha - now a cargo-only carrier
Wien Air Alaska - defunct
While we could go into why American/US Airways is more of a shell of a legacy (primarily because the LCC bought the legacy, which then bought the other legacy), that’s a topic for another thread.
For this, I chose United. Having flown on all but AAL, UAL gave me the best service, especially when flying overseas. That, and that they have the single most valuable IFE component to an aviation enthusiast: Ch. 9.
US Platinum/Chairman for the past 13 years. Suffered through Wolff, Siegal, the Alabama Retirement Fund guy and then Parker. I transitioned to WN at the beginning of the AW/US debacle. I have since come back. I will hold judgement on the AA/US merger (and I think everyone else should too) for at least a couple of years.
I’m going to miss the Star Alliance option for flying. The demise of CLE may hit ALB pretty hard. We will see. We still still don’t know what new flights will be added to ALB. DFW? MIA? ORD? Even something to JFK?? We will see.
I am a humongous fan of US Airways, sad to see it’s livery go. It’s practically all I fly because I almost always fly out of Philly Int’l. On the other hand, merging with American Airlines doesn’t have any negatives, it’s just making it better. The more the merrier! The new American will be better than Delta and United. No doubt.
