History
FBA was founded by brothers Bill and Bud Fischer in 1951 as Galion Commuter Service, an air commuter division of a Fixed Base Operator in its namesake community in Ohio, connecting that town with Marion and Mansfield to Cleveland using a Stinson 108. Bill was a veteran of World War II, flying for the Army Air Forces.
By 1963, the carrier had adopted the FBA name and was flying the deHavilland Dove on its Ohio shuttle service. And in 1969, FBA was inaugurated into the Allegheny Commuter network. Riley Herons were added, and in 1979 a branch route was extended to Detroit and Flint, Michigan.
From mid-1980 through 1982, FBA modernized its fleet with four new CASA 212s, and expanded its Allegheny Commuter map to the USAir hub in Pittsburgh. FBA eventually took on a Shorts 330 turboprop and two Shorts 360s to cover seven destinations, but in December 1985 the carrier agreed to leave the USAir network and become a Northwest Airlink affiliate, starting in February 1986, feeding NW’s flights at Cleveland and Detroit. FBA would swap out its Shorts with new Dornier 228 19-seat turboprops, and keep the CASA 212s.
The Northwest-Republic merger announced shortly after immediately led to problems. Republic had contracted Simmons exclusively to feed Detroit, which conflicted with the DTW exclusivity Northwest had assigned to FBA prior to the merger. In August 1986, as the merger was approved by the Federal government, NWA brought the two carriers to a joint meeting in Minneapolis to try to foster a compromise. Simmons’ management offered to buy FBA but no deal was accepted, and both carriers demanded compensation from Northwest. NWA invoked a six-month termination clause in its FBA contract (there was no such clause in the Simmons agreement) to end its arrangement at the end of March 1987, but continued talking in hopes of drafting a new compromise agreement.
The Fischer family declined to pursue arbitration in its disagreement with NWA, but rather hired attorneys and filed a lawsuit in district court claiming antitrust discrimination. This case was eventually dismissed on several grounds, the most important being that the company did not use arbitration as required in its contract.
As the contract wound down, FBA tragically experienced two events with its CASA 212 equipment: a training flight crash in Ohio on February 10, 1987 which killed three crew, and another crash on March 4, 1987 at Detroit (NW flight 2268 inbound from Cleveland) that spilled onto the commuter ramp – nearly striking the terminal – killing nine and injuring 13.
The remaining assets of FBA were acquired in May 1987 by Midway Airlines and were reconstituted into the Midway Commuter operation out of Chicago.
Route Maps
Timetables
Aircraft
Financial / Annual Reports
The company was owned by the Fischer family and did not issue shareholder reports.
