Mackey International
Mackey International (MI) was a US airline, initially flying under commuter regulations until it was certificated in 1978 as an international scheduled airline by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), the now-defunct Federal agency that, until 1979, tightly regulated almost all commercial US air transportation.
Fort Lauderdale was served almost exclusively as a connection over Miami, except to Sarasota and Ft Myers.
[7] In 1970, MI (with the support of Eastern) obtained a CAB exemption to fly 44 seat aircraft (i.e. go above the size limits for aircraft that Part 298 carriers could fly as of right) between Miami, Ft Lauderdale and West Palm Beach and a dozen Bahamas points, none of them Freeport or Nassau.
Then, in 1974, the CAB extended the 44 seat exemption to cover the Turks and Caicos, and expanded the exemption to allow MI to fly between Miami, Ft Lauderdale and West Palm Beach and certain points in the Bahamas, none of them Freeport or Nassau, with 90 seat aircraft.
The CAB justified it in part by the fuel savings MI would realize (this was in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis.
[10] A 1975 timetable (for Mackey International Airlines) shows service from Miami to seven Bahamas points (other than Freeport or Nassau) and three in Turks and Caicos, many served on a multistop basis.
[11] South Florida was beset by Cuba-related terrorist activities in the mid-1970s, with dozens of bombings, leading The Miami News to call it the explosion capital of the country.
On 25 May 1977, an early-morning bomb blast destroyed MI's Fort Lauderdale's offices, without injury as the last employees had gone home.
An extremist Cuban exile group claimed responsibility, and threatened the life of a specific vice president involved in Cuba negotiations.
MI stopped plans to start Cuba service, unwilling to subject employees to violence.
The CAB finally certificated MI in July 1978 to fly from West Palm Beach, Ft Lauderdale and Miami to anywhere in the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos plus Cap Haitien, noting the sense of deja vu relative to the earlier Mackey Airlines.
This was the CAB under the chair of Alfred E. Kahn (who voted on the opinion),[18] who was given the position by President Jimmy Carter specifically to encourage free competition.
The CAB, now in the last months of the regulated era, quickly approved the transaction, based on the dire financial condition of MI, which was interrupting service.
[29] One such charter was in September when an MI DC-8 retrieved the body of former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, assassinated in exile in Paraguay, to be buried in Miami.
