Our March edition of "HNL RareBirds Classic" recognizes the 10th anniversary of the closure of Aloha Airlines, with this photo of N809AL "Keeaumoku" (c/n 21720, l/n 552) taken in June 1990, as I walked to board another Aloha 737-397. This 737-2Q9/Adv is seen above waiting to taxi out for departure.
Sadly, Aloha Airlines was shutdown on 31 March 2008, as it was unable to secure further financing to keep operating, after 61 years of service.
21720 was originally delivered to Air Florida, under lease from the ITEL Corporation, in January 1979 as N37AF, and flew with the airline until September 1984. During its time with Air Florida, N37AF was subleased to Transavia for two five-months stints (May-October 1981 and May-October 1982). In September 1984, it was sold to POLA, and leased to AirCal as N458AC. When American Airlines acquired AirCal, the latter's fleet was transferred over, and wore hybrid liveries. N458AC was also subleased to the second incarnation of Braniff Airways in February 1988. In May 1990, 21720 was sub-subleased to Aloha Airlines as N809AL. In May 1997, it was acquired by ACG, and the lease continued with Aloha Airlines. It was also painted in the airline's final livery, and flew with the airline until March 2003, where it was placed into storage at GYR. In June 2005, this 737-2Q9/Adv was scrapped.
1 comment:
I think you may need to amend the post on the model type of the 300. According to the databases. Aloha's 300's were model designated as such:
737-3Y0SF
737-3T0
To be very technical about it, Aloha did have 2 fresh build 737-300's but instead of being designated -397's, they were designated under the Polaris Leasing code of 3TO.
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