Gulf Air Transport
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Gulf Air Transport was a small charter airline headquartered in New Iberia, Louisiana. It was founded in 1979, flying turboprops. In about 1984, Boeing 727s (-100 and -200) were introduced to the company. The company opened a crew bases in Philadelphia, Boston, and Detroit. Philadelphia was the largest base. The airline flew several contracts to places such as Aruba, Port-au-Prince, British Guyana, Atlantic City, San Juan, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, St. Croix, Nassau, Free Port, Aruba, Bonaire, Barbados, Cancun, Puerto Vallarta. Domestic destinations included Las Vegas, St. Louis, Orlando, and Atlantic City with others as single flight charters. Still other domestic cities were served by short term contracts or as first stops outbound including Baltimore, New York, Newark, and St. Louis. One time charter flights were operated to many international destinations including Rock Sound, Curacao, Granada, Puerto Plata, Bermuda, Port-au-Prince, London, and Warsaw. By the end of 1986, Gulf Air Transport had about 200 full time employees. In 1988, Gulf Air sent several 727-200s over to Malta for a six month "Sub-service contract" with Air Malta. The flight attendants and Pursers were Air Malta employees, but the flight crews were Gulf Air Transport pilots.
The airline was then forced to change its name to TransOcean Airways, as Gulf Air complained the name Gulf Air Transport was too similar to theirs. TransOcean Airways made the choice to start transatlantic service and added two DC-8-71s leased from United Airlines to the fleet. The aging DC-8s often had long, expensive maintenance delays that required deeper pockets than TransOcean had. At this critical time, several investors decided to pull out, effectively ending Gulf Air as a viable operation. However, before closing, TransOcean Airways was able to begin services to Ireland, Milan and London with this new aircraft.
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