Piedmont_Airlines

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Piedmont Airlines

Piedmont Airlines is a regional airline operating for US Airways Express. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the US Airways Group. Headquartered in Salisbury, Maryland, USA, it conducts flight operations using De Havilland Canada Dash 8 aircraft along the East Coast of the United States. Its main base is Wicomico Regional Airport, Salisbury, with hubs at Philadelphia International Airport, Charlotte/Douglas International Airport.

History

The airline was formed in 1931 by Richard Henson as Henson Aviation, a fixed base operator in Hagerstown, Maryland. It began its first scheduled flights to Washington National Airport in 1962 under the Hagerstown Commuter name, later changed to Henson Airlines. Allegheny Airlines (now US Airways) and Henson began one of the world's first code sharing arrangements in 1967, and Henson re-branded itself as an Allegheny Commuter carrier using Beechcraft 99 aircraft. It initially developed a route structure serving Washington DC, Philadelphia and Baltimore while establishing a new headquarters for Allegheny Commuter at Salisbury, Maryland in 1968. In the 1970s, the airline upgraded to Shorts 330 and De Havilland Dash 7 turboprops.

In 1983, Piedmont Aviation bought Henson and re-branded the airline as "Henson, The Piedmont Regional Airline." Under Piedmont's control, the airline expanded rapidly, particularly in Florida. Both were purchased by the USAir Group in 1987 with Piedmont absorbed two years later and Henson's aircraft repainted in USAir Express livery. The 1980s saw rapid growth by the company, first resulting the upgrade of its fleet to the De Havilland Canada Dash 8 aircraft, and an expansion in the fleet size. With the growth in passenger capacity, the airline made a geographic expansion to Florida, including numerous intrastate routes in Florida, and it opened a maintenance facility in Jacksonville.

The Piedmont name was resurrected in 1993, when USAir (now US Airways) renamed Henson to "Piedmont Airlines". This was done to protect the Piedmont brand name, which could be used by others if not exercised in trade use for a period of time. USAir continued this practice by changing the name of its two other wholly owned regional airline subsidiaries, Jetstream and Allegheny Commuter, to PSA Airlines and Allegheny Airlines, respectively. (Pacific Southwest Airlines was the name of a California-based airline merged into USAir.) In 1997, USAir was renamed US Airways, and Piedmont was likewise re-branded as a US Airways Express carrier. US Airways merged Allegheny Airlines into Piedmont in 2004. The airline has 6,150 employees (at November 2007).