Overseas National Airways

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

Overseas National Airways began in San Francisco on May 18, 1946, when former Navy transport pilot George W. Tompkins incorporated Air Travel. It became Calasia Air Transport in 1947, worked C-54 contracts, and adopted the grander Overseas National Airways name when the company incorporated in Delaware in July 1950.

ONA made its bones hauling military passengers and cargo for the Military Air Transport Service during the Korean War era. It was a supplemental carrier: not a buttoned-up scheduled airline, but a charter specialist living on contracts, long routes, and the occasional operational migraine.

The first version of ONA stumbled into bankruptcy in October 1963, halted flying, and was reconstituted under new ownership and management by 1965. The revived airline entered the jet age with DC-8s, later operating DC-9s and wide-body DC-10s while carrying charter travelers across the Atlantic, Pacific, Caribbean, and beyond.

New York became ONA’s corporate headquarters during its later independent years, while the company’s earlier roots were in San Francisco and it maintained a small headquarters in Washington, D.C. Competition, financial strain, and a brutally changing airline market caught up with the carrier; operations ceased on September 15, 1978, and the business was fully liquidated by January 1979.

Our Overseas National Airways collection celebrates a globe-striding charter original from the era when airline names sounded enormous, aircraft wore serious stripes, and “supplemental” somehow meant flying almost everywhere.