The encyclopedia of experiences in the vast history of Northwest Airlines can be daunting to open, especially as we continue digitizing our archives and adding new categories of materials like staff newsletters and biographies. Even the main trunks of this website such as “timetables” and “aircraft” have dozens of branches and hundreds of files attached! And while our “timeline” pages offer one great big unified narrative of events, trying to follow the story thread for any particular carrier can be frustrating.
So, as another way to approach all this material, we have started to build “landing pages” for specific carriers. These pages feature a full corporate history, plus organized links across the website to materials specific to that carrier, such as financial reports, aircraft photo galleries of the specific types they flew, newsletters, route maps, and timetables.
We are already well underway in this process with recent “landing page” additions for the Airlink carriers of Mesaba, Big Sky, Compass, Fischer Brothers, and Pacific Island Aviation. Today’s entry adds the important carrier of Express I/Pinnacle – built from scratch in 1985 to feed the Republic hubs at Memphis and Minneapolis/St. Paul, and a key piece of Republic’s “Heartland Strategy” that turned the company’s fortunes around.
Express I would remain an important part of Northwest’s hub strategy after the merger, and through boom times and lean years adapt and re-position itself, eventually adding regional jets. It was acquired by NWA, spun off, allowed to fly for other competitors, change its name to Pinnacle, and finally become family again after the Delta merger as a wholly-owned subsidiary now known as Endeavor Air.
We’ll be rolling out more pages like this for all the other carriers in the NWA Family – and possibly beyond as we explore the full impact of commercial aviation here in the Northland!
