THE FIRST MERGER

In 1968, Allegheny Airlines took Lake Central in a merger. Lake Central was in a shaky situation and widely known as Shaky Lake because of their financial condition. I might say that when Allegheny sent Tom Ferguson to us, many of us thought he was a plant. We were never entirely sure because he started painting the airplanes in a bold new color scheme featuring a big red heart on their tails. Many of the employees and customers alike called us the airline with a 'heart on'. It didn't take management long to warn us about saying that.

In 2002, I had the opportunity to renew my acquaintance with Ed Colodny who confirmed to me that Tom Ferguson was indeed a plant, but that he really believed he could turn the Shaky Lake around. History tells us that he was not successful.

With Allegheny, it was a whole new deal for us. We had been used to operating the Douglas DC-3 aircraft and Radar Convair 340 Centraliners before converting the Convairs to Convair 580's and began replacing the DC-3 fleet with the Nord 262 aircraft type. The Nords were used by Allegheny after being painted Purple, given French names and dressing the flight attendants in French motif uniforms.

Copyright 2004-2009  M C Pyles