page_title: Pacific Southwest Airlines
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Pacific Southwest Airlines / History
caption_attribution_description: PSA Lockheed Electra Repository: San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive
context_page_description: Pacific Southwest Airlines was a United States airline headquartered in San Diego, California, that operated from 1949 to 1988. It was the first large discount airline in the United States. PSA called itself "The World's Friendliest Airline" and painted a smile on the nose of its airplanes, the PSA Grinningbirds. Opinion L.A. of the Los Angeles Times called PSA "practically the unofficial flag carrier airline of California for almost forty years."
  The airline initially operated as an intrastate airline wholly within the state of California. This strategy which avoided the steep costs from federal regulation would later serve as the model for Southwest Airlines, doing in Texas what PSA had done in California. After the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, PSA expanded to cities in other western states, and eventually to several cities in Mexico.
  In 1986 PSA became the first of two airlines that merged into the existing USAir, followed by Piedmont Airlines in 1987. The PSA acquisition was completed in 1988. USAir changed its name to US Airways in 1997.
context_section_description: Kenny Friedkin founded the airline in 1949 with a $1,000-a-month leased Douglas DC-3. Friedkin obtained information from a travel agent upon starting the airline due to lessons learned from a  failed precursor airline (Friedkin Airlines). The DC-3 began a weekly round trip from San Diego to Oakland via Burbank. Reservations were initially taken at a World War II surplus latrine refitted as a ticket office. In 1951 PSA moved its flights from Oakland to San Francisco International Airport; in late 1955 PSA replaced the DC-3s with two Douglas DC-4s from Capital Airlines, painting rectangles around the windows to make them resemble the Douglas DC-6.
  In January 1958 PSA scheduled 37 DC-4s a week Burbank to San Francisco (29 of which originated in San Diego) and four nonstops San Diego to San Francisco; fare from Burbank to San Francisco was $9.99. United Airlines, Western Airlines and TWA then scheduled a total of 241 nonstop flights each week from Los Angeles to San Francisco, plus 49 flights a week from Burbank to San Francisco. About half of these flights by the competition were First Class only ($22.05); the rest carried coach passengers for $13.50 (all fares were subject to 10% federal tax.) Later in 1958 PSA shifted some flights from Burbank to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX); that year it carried 296,000 passengers.
  In late 1959 PSA began flying Lockheed L-188 Electras with 92 seats and a six-seat lounge, replacing the 70-seat DC-4s. In 1963 it got its sixth Electra; by then it carried more passengers between the Bay Area and Los Angeles than any other airline. Total PSA passengers climbed from 355,000 in 1959 to 1,305,000 in 1963 and 5,162,000 in 1970.
  Boeing 727-114s, Boeing 727-214s, Boeing 737-214s and McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30s replaced the Electras in 1965–70. The May 1965 OAG shows 103 Electras a week Los Angeles (LAX) to San Francisco (SFO), 32 a week Los Angeles to Oakland, 34 a week Burbank to San Francisco and 5 a week San Diego to San Francisco. Schedule time Los Angeles to San Francisco was 60 minutes while Burbank-San Francisco was 55 minutes. (Apparently, the May OAG wasn't up to date; PSA's timetable for 20 April 1965 shows some 727 flights. On Fridays and Sundays the 727 left San Diego in the morning and returned 16 hours later after making seven LAX-SFO-LAX round trips; other days of the week it made six round trips.)
  In 1966 PSA started flying to San Jose, and in 1967 to Sacramento Executive Airport (SAC); later that year PSA and other airlines moved to the new  Sacramento International Airport (SMF). Ontario was added in 1968 and Long Beach, Fresno and Stockton in 1971–72. In 1967 PSA was finally allowed to use offshore airway V25 to San Diego, despite being an intrastate airline.
  In 1974-75 PSA flew two wide-body Lockheed L-1011 TriStars, which were unique in having lower deck seating; they flew Los Angeles-San Francisco and San Diego-Los Angeles-San Francisco.  PSA was the only intrastate airline in the U.S. ever to operate wide-body jets. Electras returned in 1975 for flights to Lake Tahoe that ended in 1979 (the Lake Tahoe Airport, in the Sierra Nevada, did not allow scheduled airline jets until the 1980s although Pacific Air Lines briefly flew Boeing 727-100s to Lake Tahoe in 1966.)  Major intrastate competitor Air California also flew Electras to Lake Tahoe until 1979–80 but then returned to Lake Tahoe as AirCal with McDonnell Douglas MD-80s and Boeing 737-300s after the jet ban ended.  PSA never served Lake Tahoe after retiring its Electras.
  After airline deregulation PSA expanded beyond California to Reno, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Tucson and Albuquerque. Its first flight beyond California was Oakland to Reno in December 1978. The airline introduced automated ticketing and check-in machines at several airports and briefly flew to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico. When PSA's plan to buy the assets of Braniff International Airways fell through, the airline expanded its network north to Washington, Oregon and Idaho. PSA operated new BAe 146-200s to smaller airports like Eureka, Califo
caption: Lockheed L-188 Electra of PSA around 1959
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