Eastern Airlines, which many may have thought to be a name long left in the past, flies an incredibly unique route network today. With just a singularly monthly service, it’s hard to entirely understand what the carrier is all about.
Bearing the name of a legendary US airline, many find it challenging to understand what precisely this carrier has become. In this article, we’ll trace Eastern’s history and explain where it stands today.
A little history
The original carrier to use the Eastern name was Eastern Air Lines, a major US airline that flew between 1926 and 1991. The airline was an innovator, pioneering long-haul routes and developing hourly “shuttle” services between New York, Washington DC, and Boston.
However, amid financial difficulties, the company began deteriorating by the late 1980s. Parts of the airline were sold off to other companies, such as airline holding group TexasAir, which gained control of many of the carrier’s assets and even the entire company before a court removed Eastern from the organization’s management. Eastern Air Shuttle, one of the carrier’s most innovative assets, was sold to Donald Trump, who renamed it Trump Shuttle in 1989 before the company folded a couple of years later.
What happened next?
By the time Eastern had ceased operations in 1991, the carrier’s glory days remained far behind them. Naturally, many expected to never hear of the airline again, and many never really have. The airline, however, still exists and currently flies one monthly frequency for an even more bizarre reason than one might expect.
In 2009, a new organization, the Eastern Air Lines Group, acquired the rights, intellectual property, and trademarks of the original Eastern Air Lines. By 2015, the new company had launched charter flights, even making the headlines for flying the body of Muhammad Ali from Phoenix to Louisville.
Photo: Eastern Airlines
However, the new carrier’s goal was to eventually launch scheduled commercial flights. Unfortunately, the airline was never granted certification and ultimately folded in 2017.
The latest Eastern
Dynamic Airways, a Miami-based startup, filed for bankruptcy in 2018 and, after a successful restructuring, acquired the intellectual property rights for the Eastern name. Now rebranded as Eastern Airlines and with a fleet of widebody Boeing 767 and 777 aircraft, the airline aimed to establish a new scheduled passenger network.
Since 2018, Eastern has served nine destinations and connected the US cities of Miami, New York, and Boston to Latin American cities such as Guayaquil in Ecuador, Montevideo in Uruguay, and Managua in Nicaragua. However, the carrier’s route network has since diminished, likely on account of lack of profitability, and the airline now only operates a single flight, once per month, between Miami International Airport (MIA) and Las Americas International Airport (SDQ) in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
While this may seem rather bizarre, it makes quite a bit of sense, given the regulations. Eastern has chosen to focus on cargo and charter services, much like Air Belgium, and has thus elected to eliminate passenger operations. However, in order to maintain its operators’ certificate, Eastern must regularly fly commercial flights and does so with a single monthly service.