With the new yellow paint scheme, unveiled in September 1971, the airline began calling itself Hughes Airwest, two words instead of the initial three.

Service expanded to resorts in Mexico; domestic routes didn't reach east of Utah and Arizona until Denver, Des Moines, Milwaukee, and Houston Hobby Airport were added in 1978.

In September 1979, the airline was grounded for two months by a walkout by their ticket agents, reservations handlers, and office employees, who had been without a contract for over a year.

Apart from their all-yellow scheme, the airplanes also featured a blue logo on the vertical stabilizer (tail) that resembled three diamonds connected (possibly a reference to the initials of Howard Hughes).

Zamparelli also designed the uniforms of the flight attendants in the new colors, primarily in Sundance Yellow trimmed with Universe Blue.

[40][41] After the sale in October 1980 the all-yellow paint scheme was gradually replaced by Republic's white with blue and green trim.

On the evening of Sunday, June 6, 1971, Flight 706, a Douglas DC-9-31 collided in mid-air with a U.S. Marine Corps F-4B fighter over southern California near Duarte.

[45][46][47] After boarding Flight 800 at McCarran airport in Las Vegas in late morning on Thursday, January 20, 23-year-old Richard Charles LaPoint claimed he had a bomb while the plane was on the taxiway and demanded $50,000 cash, two parachutes, and a helmet.

[48] When these demands were met, 51 Reno-bound passengers and two flight attendants were released; the DC-9 departed eastward toward Denver, followed by two F-111 aircraft of the U.S. Air Force from nearby Nellis AFB.

Without a coat and in cowboy boots, the hijacker bailed out from the lower aft door over the treeless plains of northeastern Colorado in mid-afternoon.

[46] Facing potential death penalty charges for air piracy,[53] the Vietnam veteran and former U.S. Army paratrooper[54] was sentenced to forty years, but served less than eight, and was released from a halfway house in 1979;[48] he died at age 60 in his native New Hampshire in 2008.