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2021 - Embraer E140 - The Last Days of the Lansing Air System


2021 - Embraer E140 - The Last Days of the Lansing Air System

As is the case with most major American airlines, Valiant partners with a number of small airline which operate small aircraft on routes between hubs and small destinations. These flights operate under the Valiant Commuter brandmark. Perhaps the most influential of Valiant's regional partners was the Lansing Air System. LAS has long been the preferred carrier for Valiant Commuter flights out of the Detroit hub. The two airlines had a very long business history.

Originally, Lansing Air System was a product of Michigan's state government meddling in the airline market economy. Governor Milliken of Michigan entered office in 1969 and would hold the position until 1983. Near the end of his first term, Milliken's advisors began to confront in earnest the problems the state of Michigan faced as the state's industrial heartbeat began to slow. Many factors worsened the effect of shuttered factories, but one was the difficulty with which Michiganders located jobs across the state. Many towns across the state had significant portions of their population working jobs in moribund manufacturing plants. When these plants closed, invariably these municipalities would become overrun with unemployment, leading to a variety of social ills. There were many initiatives offered by the state government to get the unemployed working in other sectors, but these work opportunities were not, and indeed could not be, located in the same places as people left unemployed after the closure of their local mills. Thus, Michigan faced a small transportation crisis.

Traveling across the state by train was effectively impossible. Car and trucks had not been kind to the railroads and when profits cratered the first cuts were to commuter service to small cities. Driving was more possible than taking the train, but it was expensive. Additionally, the range at which people could reasonably drive to work every day was relatively limited. Milliken's staffers proposed a curious solution to this problem of transportation. Create an airline owned by the State of Michigan to operate frequent and convenient transportation to and from Michigan's regional airports. This air system would not only allow for people to take up jobs far from their homes but it would also directly employ a number of Michiganders in high skilled jobs. The market gap was there. Valiant, under Ford's ownership particularly, had secured CAB authorization to terminate much of its less profitable inter-Michigan routes in favour of operating to larger destinations further afield. However, the proposal had one very large difficulty to overcome. Governor Milliken, despite being a nominally liberal Rockefeller Republican, would never approve of what amounted to a socialist airline owned by his state government.

Staffers and advisors quietly murmured as they traded ideas for how to implement the Air System without contravening Milliken's political stances. A truly socialised airline was never going to fly so the next best option had to be pursued: subsidies. The Governor's office worked to draw up a series of specific subsidies to induce an existing or future airline to provide frequent (3 times daily or more) service from a number of smaller cities across the state. Originally, the legislation was to name Detroit as the hub in an attempt to induce Valiant (then FAST) and its corporate overlords to operate the Air System network. However, consultation with Ford revealed that management believed that without subsidies the routes would not be profitable and did not believe that state subsidies would be politically durable. Detroit was also the top choice just because it was a large airport with facilities to handle the network the Governor's office envisioned. With it clear that the major area carrier was not going to bite, the Detroit hub became more negotiable. In 1973, late in the legislative process, the hub was moved to Lansing both for its more geographically central location and to garner legislative support from two influential state house members whose districts happened to include Lansing and its outlying suburbs. Thus, in the final months of 1973 the Air Transport Act for All Michiganders (ATAAM of 73) made its way through both legislative chambers and the office of the Governor.

1973 was a big year for airlines and Americans generally, but not in a good way. The oil crisis hobbled many airlines and made driving more expensive - both exacerbating the issue of transportation and unemployment in the state, whilst dissuading potential investors from entering the Michigan regional market. In 1974 no airlines attempted to start operations to receive subsidy funding. In 1975 no airlines attempted to start operations to receive subsidy funding. Late in 1975, the Comstock Shuttle, a small Saginaw based airline operating corporate charters all across the midwest, declared bankruptcy. Sandra Comstock, who had just succeeded her father Ralph as head of the company 2 years prior found the company overwhelmed by debt and saw no way to salvage it. Businesses were opting to transport their cargo by road or contract out cargo movement to larger, more competitive carriers. One of Ralph's last acts before retiring had been the procurement of a fleet of new Shorts SC7 Skyvan. These were expensive to purchase new and they were efficient for small cargo loads but they couldn't compete with the efficiency of larger aircraft operated by major carriers. The result was a pileup of debt without significant profit.

But Sandra didn’t want to give up. She approached her creditors with a proposal to salvage the company’s assets and continue airline operations. Comstock Shuttle had experienced crew, a relatively new fleet, and the logistical apparatus to operate a small commercial network. The ATAAM of 73 provided subsidies that would cover most of the costs involved in operating such a network. Creditors agreed to liquidate the Comstock Shuttle and forgive its debts in exchange for substantial shares in a new company named the Corporation for the Lansing Air System. The new company was in many ways functionally the same as its predecessor, successfully retaining its operator certificate and the callsign COMSTOCK.

Comstock’s 4 Skyvans were fitted with 15 seats and a small luggage space, company offices moved to Lansing, and bi-hourly flights to Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Traverse City were inaugurated by the end of 1976. Operations were not known for their high load factors, but buoyed by the continuing subsidies offered by the ATAAM of 73, operations of the Lansing Air Shuttle expanded in the late 70s with the purchase of new Short Brothers 330 passenger aircraft. By 1980, LAS offered at least twice daily flights to 10 different Michigan airports. Whilst things were good for LAS, though, they were not good for the State Government.

In 1983 a shift change occurred in the Governor’s mansion and Blanchard replaced Milliken. Faced with a mounting state debt crisis, the new governor explored almost every avenue down which government spending could be cut. One very easy cut was for an economic stimulus plan which had never quite lived up to its price. It wasn’t the state’s largest expenditure but it had almost no proven impact on the economic health of the state. The ATAAM of 73 became the much more conservative ATAAM of 84. The new act cut basic subsidies for Air System routes by 70% but offered a small subsidy to the airline for every person it could prove that it transported to and from their place of work at least 300 days of the year. The ATAAM of 84 proved seriously deleterious to LAS’s operations. The carrier slashed costs and frequencies but still struggled with profit.

In 1985, at a boardroom in Detroit, Sandra Comstock and FAST’s board met to discuss a proposal that would benefit both carriers. Later that year, in time for the winter season, FAST and LAS announced a suite of flights operated out of Detroit by LAS aircrafts and crew branded as FAST Commuter. FAST Commuter proved to be a more profitable enterprise than the Air System flights out of Lansing. Throughout the 80s and into the 90s, LAS transitioned more routes away from Lansing and towards Detroit. Additionally, the carrier began the process of replacing its Short Brothers aircraft with faster, more efficient Embraer Brasilia. 330s became 120s became jet powered 140s and 145s by the end of the millennium.

Into the new millennium, LAS had plans to be one of the earlier operators of Embraer’s new E-Jet line. The EMB 170 and 175 joined the LAS fleet and took over some of Valiant’s thinner mainline routes. In 2008, the carrier briefly operated some of Valiant’s feeder network out of the Boston focus city. In 2012, the carrier opened a small base and took over a small portion of Valiant’s Commuter network out of Dulles. Throughout this period, a small but proud fleet of E140s remained in an LAS livery to serve the few remaining Lansing routes. At this point, the ATAAM was no more but the carrier refused to completely abandon its legacy, particularly when the flights still had some regular customers. By 2010, the only routes remaining out of Lansing were to Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago, Traverse City, and Grand Rapids. In 2016, Valiant became the launch North American costumer of Embraer’s state of the art E175-E2. The carrier was positioning itself to expand to yet another Valiant hub or maybe even revitalize their independent operations under a new name and low-cost regional model.

Then the global pandemic came and put a stop to all plans for future growth. All airlines were hit hard by the economic shutdown and lockdowns, but LAS was particularly poorly positioned with a fleet of new aircraft waiting for passengers who could not come. The financial situation rapidly unfolded through 2020. By Christmas, with the airline suffering for a whole year, it was at near the point of bankruptcy. Valiant, buoyed by federal stimulus money, offered to buy the ailing carrier, saving the larger from needing to reconstruct a substantial portion of its regional network and saving the smaller carrier from being forced to lay off its employees and liquidate its assets. LAS took the deal and by the new year, the carrier became a fully owned subsidiary of Valiant. The only three Lansing flights remaining were to Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee. All LAS flights scheduled after January 14, 2021 were cancelled and the few remaining aircraft in the LAS livery lost their famous green colours. The E2 orders remain on the books for now but given the aircraft’s extremely protracted development cycle and the takeover, whether those orders will ever manifest in physical form is far from certain. It took less than 3 months for almost all traces of the Lansing Air System to disappear from its namesake city and the rest of the country. The only public facing remains of LAS, once the pride of Michigan, are small logos on the noses of its aircraft.


[Edit: Boat shifted down]



    There better be a Lansing retrojet once those E2s do get there.

     

    But yeah, these look great!

    can you write more lore?

    bro wrote a book about an airplane jpeg he made

    bro wrote a book about an airplane jpeg he made

    deadass he wrote nearly 1,800 words.

     

    As the youth of today are saying:

    "Touch Grass"

    why

    There better be a Lansing retrojet once those E2s do get there.

     

    But yeah, these look great!

    Thank you. Would be a little weird to see an airline doing a heritage livery for a regional but VL does like the good ole' days so it's not off the table.

     

    can you write more lore?

    Sure. There once was a fellow named Zipp. Into the dumpster he would trip. His friends all would ask "why are you such a klutz?" He would tell them he only ate cigarette butts.

     

    bro wrote a book about an airplane jpeg he made

    Actually it's a PNG

     

    why

    Not sure how many other LAS posts will come out anytime soon so I went ahead and got basically all the lore out of the way