Mesaba Airlines history

In 1950 Newstrom moved the company to Grand Rapids.

In 1970, the Halverson family of Duluth, Minnesota bought Mesaba from Newstrom.

On 4 February 1973, they started regularly scheduled airline services serving rural Minnesota communities.

The airline was sold to the Swenson family in 1978, who under CEO Rob Swenson was already operating a small carrier in Thief River Falls, Minnesota.

They took the company public in 1982 as the airline began flying to Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota, using a fleet of Beech 99s.

In 1983, Mesaba became a codeshare partner of Republic Airlines, flying turboprop aircraft from small regional communities to the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport.

In 1984 Mesaba Airlines began operating under a Part 121 Air Carrier Certificate from the United States Department of Transportation, the same type of certificate as that held by the major airlines.

Zuliana De Aviacion was a Venezuelan airline formed in 1985 and based in the city of Maracaibo, Venezuela.

In 1986, after the merger of Republic Airlines and Northwest Orient Airlines, Mesaba transitioned their codeshare partnership, and began operations as a Northwest Airlink carrier.

On December 1988, the airline initiated service to four new markets out of the Detroit hub, including Cleveland, Dayton, and Akron, Ohio, and Erie, Pennsylvania.

In January 1989, the airline expanded service to four additional markets in Michigan: Pellston, Traverse City, Flint, and Wausau.

During 1990, Northwest for the first time has the best on-time performance among the seven largest United States airlines, based on United States Department of Transportation consumer reports for the domestic operations of ten reporting United States airlines.

In 1991, Mesaba began adding the first of 25 De Havilland Canada Dash 8 aircraft (leased from Northwest Airlines) to begin replacing the Fokker F-27's.

November 15: Northwest Airlines boards its one-millionth Japanese passenger of 1994, earliest date ever for this milestone.

In November 1995, Mesaba Airlines in connection with Northwest Airlines opened the new "G" concourse at Detroit Metro International Airport.

Four months later, in March 1996, Mesaba announced the purchase commitment of 50 34-passenger Saab 340 aircraft with the option of purchasing 22 additional aircraft.

January 20: Northwest reports record 1997 profits of $597 million, the largest annual net income in the Company’s history.

In June 1998, Mesaba opened a new maintenance facility at the Rhinelander-Oneida County Airport in Wisconsin.

November 20: Northwest announces plans to double Tokyo-Anchorage service during the 1999 summer travel period.

September 28: Northwest announces plan to equip fleet with defibrillators by end of 2000.

In the fall of 2003, Northwest wanted to retire the Avro jet fleet, which comprised about half of Mesaba's revenue.

The projects are scheduled to be completed in 2004.

Trouble struck in 2005 when Northwest Airlines filed bankruptcy.

In an interview in January 2006, Mesaba President John Spanjers announced that the Mesaba fleet would be cut in half by the end of the year.

Yet, in April 2007, Northwest acquired Mesaba Airlines, establishing the smaller airline as Northwest’s subsidiary.

On November 24, 2009, Mesaba was one of three airlines, including Continental Airlines and ExpressJet, fined by the US Department of Transportation (DOT) for delaying passengers from deplaning for over six hours overnight in Rochester, MN on August 8, 2009.

The next year, Northwest was folded into Delta, who sold Mesaba to Pinnacle in 2010.

In 2011, Mesaba Airlines began operating flights out of New York City's LaGuardia Airport for US Airways under the US Airways Express brand.

On January 4, 2012, Mesaba was folded into Pinnacle Airlines.