[4] In 1977 the airline was certificated by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) as a supplemental air carrier to fly cargo from Florida and Georgia to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America.

[6] The CAB was a now defunct Federal agency that until US airline deregulation in 1979 tightly regulated almost all commercial air transportation in the United States.

This was followed by scrutiny from the Federal Aviation Administration, which revoked the airline's operating license due to maintenance irregularities during the DOT “white glove inspections” directed by the Hon.

According to the Official Airline Guide (OAG), in the spring of 1996 Rich was operating scheduled passenger service with L-1011 aircraft nonstop twice a week between Anchorage (ANC) and Honolulu (HNL).

The US aviation authority FAA wanted to allow flight operations until February 1997, but the US Department of Transportation refused to approve and made a license dependent on numerous conditions.

The following year, the FAA released findings stating that the grounding of Rich may have been an overreaction, and that minor maintenance issues may have been blown out of proportion in the public hysteria following the ValuJet crash.