[1] Ozark Air Lines was incorporated on 1 September 1943 in Missouri by Laddie Hamilton, Barak Mattingly and Floyd Jones with $100,000 in paid-up capital.

Ozark applied for certification as a feeder or local service airline in the Mississippi Valley Case of Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB).

The CAB was the now-defunct federal agency that, at the time, tightly regulated almost all air transport in the United States.

PAL agreed to sell its airline operation (including five DC-3s) to Ozark in exchange for 37.5% of the business.

Services were started on September 26, 1950, using Douglas DC-3s initially from St. Louis to Chicago later to Tulsa and Memphis.

One of three co-founders, Arthur G. Heyne was an attorney in St. Louis, Missouri, and served as Secretary-Treasurer starting in 1950.

Denver was added in 1966 and, in 1969, the network sprouted eastward: Ozark was awarded nonstops from Champaign and Peoria to Washington Dulles, continuing to New York LaGuardia.

[8] By 1967, the Martins and F-27s were replaced with Fairchild Hiller FH-227s, a stretched F-27; Ozark was all-turbine after the last DC-3 flight in October 1968.

In 1985 Ozark began a code-share agreement with Air Midwest, a commuter airline operating 17-seat Fairchild Swearingen Metroliners.

[9] In the mid-1980s Ozark and TWA had a de facto duopoly at St. Louis Lambert International Airport, a hub for both.

A year later, the company ceased operations and sold its assets to Great Plains Airlines, based in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

[14] From the 1960s through the late 1980s, Ozark Air Lines' reservations department used a special toll-free WX telephone prefix in New Jersey which could be reached only in certain areas of the state by dialing 0 and asking the New Jersey Bell operator to connect to Ozark's WX number: WX-8300.