Jet America Airlines

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

Jet America Airlines, Inc. was incorporated on September 11, 1980, and began scheduled passenger service on November 16, 1981. Its corporate headquarters stood at 2895 Temple Avenue in Signal Hill, California, just next door to Long Beach and its home airport.

The upstart launched with a Long Beach–Chicago O’Hare flight and built a domestic network around Long Beach. Jet America’s sharp, late-deregulation identity rode McDonnell Douglas MD-80-family jets to destinations including Dallas/Fort Worth, St. Louis, Oakland, Detroit, Las Vegas, Orange County, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

Alaska Air Group acquired Jet America in 1986, initially keeping it as a separate carrier. The plan met a rough patch: escalating competition on key Long Beach routes and continuing losses prompted a retreat from service east of the Rockies during 1987. Airline consolidation: always a cheerful little buzz saw.

Our Jet America Airlines collection celebrates the compact California carrier that aimed its polished MD-80s beyond Long Beach, then disappeared into Alaska Airlines on October 1, 1987. It is a tribute to a brief, colorful era when a Signal Hill airline took on the big routes, the big airports, and eventually the big corporate blender.