TRANS WORLD Airlines (TWA) regional subsidiary Trans World Express (TWE) is to cease operations on 6 November. Its services will be taken over by independent carrier Trans States Airlines. TWE employees will be laid off and its fleet of 11 leased ATR 42s disposed of, along with the airline's maintenance base at Philadelphia.
TWA acquired the former Ransome Airlines from Pan American World Airways in December 1991. TWE was restructured in September 1994 in a bid to make it profitable, but its board has decided that the carrier could not sustain profitability in the long term and should cease operations.
Trans States is TWA's code-sharing feeder partner at the carrier's St Louis, Missouri, hub, under a five-year agreement signed in October 1994. It operates 350 daily flights with a fleet of 42 ATR 42s and 72s, Embraer EMB-120s and Jetstream 31s and 41s.
Trans States will take over TWE's services at TWA's New York Kennedy hub on 7 November with 60 flights a day using eight Washington, DC-based Jetstream 41s. TWE serves nine markets in the eastern USA and expects Trans States to take over operations in all of them.
Source: Flight International
