empire
empire
Empire was founded in the 1975 as Oneida County Aviation,[2] a small carrier based in Utica. After the passage of the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978, the airline saw potential to grow a hub operation at larger nearby Syracuse using a fleet of 80-seat Fokker F28 Fellowship twin jets and smaller 19-seat Swearingen Metro II propjets. Empire acquired additional F28s from Philadelphia-based Altair Airlines after that airline shut down in 1982. In addition to hub flights at Syracuse, Empire offered direct flights from other medium-sized Mid-Atlantic cities like Rochester and Buffalo to major business centers like New York and Boston. Empire was named Air Transport World Regional Airline of the Year for 1984.[3] Empire F28 in Piedmont livery with Empire titles Empire's success attracted the attention of Piedmont Airlines, a pre-deregulation "local service carrier" based in North Carolina. After deregulation, Piedmont expanded into the Northeast, starting with a hub opened at Baltimore–Washington International Airport in about 1982. Piedmont bought Empire in 1985 and merged them into itself on 1 May 1986, which resulted in additional Fokker F28 jets being added to the Piedmont fleet.[3] Syracuse joined Baltimore (BWI), Charlotte (CLT), and Dayton (DAY), OH as hubs in Piedmont's system. In about 1987, Piedmont opened an extension to the south concourse at Syracuse Hancock Airport to handle additional growth. The dominant pre-deregulation local-service carrier in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, USAir, saw Piedmont's growth into the Northeast as a threat to its lucrative and often previously monopoly routes from medium-size cities such as Rochester, Syracuse and Buffalo. As part of the industry-wide consolidation of 1986–1987, USAir bought Piedmont in 1987. USAir operated Piedmont as a separate unit, including the old Empire Syracuse hub and F28 jets previously operated by Empire and then Piedmont, until Piedmont was completely merged into USAir in August 1989. By the early 1990s the old Empire Airlines hub was gone, its connecting traffic moved mostly to USAir's key hubs in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. USAir subsequently changed its name to US Airways which in turn was merged into American Airlines in 2015.
