Pacific Southwest Airlines

Pacific Southwest Airlines

IATA ICAO Call sign PS PSA PSA
Commenced operations	6 May 1949; 75 years ago (1949-05-06)[1]
Ceased operations	9 April 1988; 36 years ago (1988-04-09) (merged into USAir)
Hubs	Los Angeles San Diego San Francisco
Parent company	PSA, Inc. (1973–1986) PS Group, Inc. (1986–1987) USAir (1987–1988)
Headquarters	San Diego, California, United States
Key people	Kenny Friedkin J. Floyd Andrews

Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) was a low-cost US airline headquartered in San Diego, California, that operated from 1949 to 1988. It was the first substantial scheduled discount airline. PSA called itself "The World's Friendliest Airline" and painted a smile on the nose of its airplanes, the PSA Grinningbirds.^[2] The Los Angeles Times called PSA "practically the unofficial flag carrier airline of California for almost forty years."^[3]

For three quarters of its existence, PSA operated as a California intrastate airline. PSA's early success as an intrastate airline served as a model for Southwest Airlines, which did in Texas what PSA had done in California.^[4] After the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, PSA expanded to cities in other US western states and Mexico. However, PSA's performance in the new deregulated era was disappointing relative to that of Southwest and PSA's former fellow California intrastate carrier AirCal.

In 1986, USAir agreed to purchase PSA, the transaction closed in 1987 and PSA was integrated into USAir in 1988. The PSA acquisition gave USAir a network on the West Coast, but by 1991 USAir had largely withdrawn from California in the face of fierce fare wars driven, in significant part, by the spread of Southwest. Today's American Airlines Group continues to protect the PSA trademark by using it as a name for a regional airline subsidiary, PSA Airlines. PSA did not survive for long after deregulation, but its influence lives on through the continued success of Southwest.