PIA - A History: Events of 1985
The year 1985 offered a sample of what was to come in the last half of the 1980s - mergers and code-sharing. AIR WISCONSIN ARRIVES PIA In late-January 1985, Mississippi Valley Airlines agreed to a takeover bid by Appleton, Wisconsin-based Air Wisconsin. The latter absorbed MVA on June 1 that year, and continued using MVA's F-27/Shorts 360 fleet at PIA. I can't recall seeing a Shorts 360 painted in Air Wisconsin's green, orange and white colors, so they probably remained in MVA's blue, yellow and white until finally withdrawn from here by Spring 1986. On July 20, 1985 Air Wisconsin began sharing United Air Lines' two-letter designator code (UA) on its Chicago-O'Hare flights, thus beginning the two carriers' close relationship which would last for many years. Two of Air Wisconsin's five PIA-ORD roundtrips were cut October 27 due to an aircraft shortage. Ironically, exactly a month earlier one of the airline's executives visited the city t...