The 13 Local Service Airlines given permanent Certificates of Convenience and Necessity in 1955 were the survivors of a 12-year process that had begun in 1943, when the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) first announced its intent to pursue the possibility of establishing ‘Feeder’ or‘Local’ airlines. And the CAB continued to exercise strong control over these young airlines, nurturing them with inflated air mail subsidy payments and regulating their route systems via the stringent hearing and examination process known as the Civil Aeronautics Board Economic Cases. There was a lot of control exerted over these carriers by the CAB, but, in return, these airlines were guaranteed a certain level of income through the subsidy system and the Board was going to make
certain that none of them failed, which would have been an embarrassment to the Board itself.

The 13 carriers that survived the shakeout of the late 1940s and early 1950s won the prize of permanent certification. The word ‘permanent’ made the companies more appealing to investors although the Locals, with their reliance on subsidy and their obligation to serve small markets, were never big money magnets. Each of them went on to serve their particular geographic territory with professionalism and corporate pride. The group of 13 remained stable and intact for another 12 years, until 1967, when one of the carriers, Central Airlines, was lost through merger. Central merged with Frontier Airlines and Frontier was the surviving carrier. That reduced the number of Locals to 12. The following year, in a 3-way combination, the Local Service Carriers serving the far-western U.S. merged to form a single airline. West Coast Airlines, Pacific Air Lines and Bonanza Air Lines came together to form Air West (later
Hughes Airwest). Also in 1968, another of the Locals, Lake Central Airlines, disappeared in a merger with Allegheny, the latter carrier being the survivor. This brought the group down to nine to finish out the decade of 1960s.

Here are brief historical sketches of each of the 13 permanently certificated U.S. Local Service carriers . . .