With over 600 copies built, the Metroliner was ubiquitous in American, Canadian, and Australian skies in the 1980s, with most of the larger commuter carriers featuring at least a few in their fleets at some point.
From the mid-1960s, Ed Swearingen, a fixed-base operator from Texas, experimented with modifying Beechcraft Twin Bonanza and Queen Air elements to develop new executive transport aircraft, in particular his Merlin series which could seat 8-10 passengers. In 1968 his team further extended the airframe and created new wings and tail section, creating the Metro whose first flight was in August 1969, optimized for 19 passenger seats to avoid the need for a flight attendant. Fairchild Aircraft purchased a majority of the company in 1971 to keep production underway, and early models were delivered in 1972-73. Updates in 1974 and then 1980 improved carrying capacity and engine reliability.
While cramped by modern standards, the type was reliable when well-cared for, and almost 200 had survived to the turn of the 2020s, mostly converted for cargo service or stationed in frontier areas.
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Southern / Republic
Southern, distracted by labor issues, aggressive DC-9 deployment, and long-range route development in the early to mid 1970s, had waited too long to replace its increasingly unreliable (but well appreciated by customers) Martin 404 fleet. While equivalently-capacious craft such as the FH-227 turboprop had been presented in the early 1970s, by the time Southern president Ed Hulse was ready to cut a deal, available options for new equipment able to be delivered immediately in the mid-1970s were sparse. Aircraft that would have been solid replacements such as the Shorts 330 or Embraer 120 were still on the drawing board at the time. Fairchild had Metroliner delivery slots available, so that is where the order went.
Passengers used to the full-sized cabin of the 40-passenger Martin 404 were shocked at the cramped 19-seat Metro II that had little space for baggage. Southern’s strategy wasn’t necessarily wrong – a station only serving a handful of passengers couldn’t justify mainline equipment – but the aircraft themselves were seriously compromised. “We had no idea of the degree of the problem with the Metroliner engines,” said Red Wallace, VP-Flight Operations. Robert Rubens from the pilots’ union was more blunt: “airborne garbage.” In fall 1979, nearly all Metros were pulled off the line for repairs, with short routes covered by buses and longer routes covered by ad-hoc Convair 580 substitutions.
Southern had exacerbated their problems by intensely scheduling the eight aircraft in the fleet. The pre-merger map of SWM service covered 108 daily departures , including 5 from Athens to Atlanta and 6 nonstops from Anniston to ATL. Five of the eight aircraft would overnight in Atlanta, so first flights of the day were early-morning departures to small towns (often with no passengers).
As the post-merger winter of 1979-80 began, Republic gave up hope of trying to fix the fleet’s engines and put the aircraft up for sale. Convairs were stationed at Memphis and Atlanta at first by deadheading from the northern system, but from April 1 980 a daily Omaha-Kansas City-Memphis bridge route allowed six (and a half) 580s to cover 82 departures. No Metroliner ever was painted in the blue-and-teal Republic scheme.
Mesaba
XJ had built its early 1980s operation on a backbone of Beech 99s and Fokker F27s, adding the Metro only in 1986. Compared to the Beech, the Metro was faster, pressurized so it could fly higher, and had more space to carry baggage and freight. With the wider route network it was operating after becoming an Airlink partner, the extra speed was necessary to maintain productivity.
Mesaba’s SWM fleet eventually reached 16 frames in the early 1990s, and reached 25 in summer 1995, but was fully replaced by July 1997 with Saab 340s.
Big Sky
GQ went back and forth with the type, bringing in a pair of Metro II in 1980 to supplement its trio of Jetstream Mark 1s; then after several years with Jetstream 32s coming back to the Metro again in 1986-87. Big Sky also picked up the former Lone Star fleet of Metros – in the year 2000 the company was flying 18 in a mix of type II, type III, and type 23. Some of these had migrated over from Mesaba when that company’s parent also owned GQ.
In 2005 the entire fleet was replaced with new Beech 1900D.
Northeast Express
Formerly Valley Flying Service, operating unscheduled air-taxi flights in Maine, Northeast Express moved to fill commuter service voids out of Boston in the wake of Eastern’s collapse in 1991. The carrier used Metroliners as well as Dash 8s in Airlink service, before going out of business in 1994.
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