Ozark Air Lines

[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.

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.

(Direct-dial toll-free service made WX numbers obsolete, and they have been largely phased out.)

Ozark inherited the Great Lakes and Mississippi Valley routes from Parks Air Lines
The dark green Ozark Air Lines logo
Another Ozark Air Lines logo
Ozark Douglas DC-9 -31 at O'Hare in 1975