77-85 in the cancelled check game
Lear 23's actually started being used by Midwest out of Lorain in the early 70's. This is the company that eventually became Airborne Express.
My earliest dealings with Lear's was a company named Rapidair that had a 23 running DEN MDW meeting about 10 other airplanes at the MDW hub about 1978. That company fell apart due to poor management about 78-79.
Jet Courier out of LUK picked up the Lear Run to DEN in a 23 serial number 98. Jet Courier grew to about 10 lears by 1985. Several other companies were flying Lears at the time, in the private sector it was Jet Courier( which was later named Wright Express ), Air Continental out of the Cleveland area, Vic Devarian out of Burbank, and PDQ was using a FLL operator to run a few 20 series Lears. There was an operator out of the Dallas area and if my memory serves me correctly the company was Stern Air.
The FED work was being run by Corporate Air out of CT, and believe it or not Epps air out of Atlanta. If I left anybody out forgive me and add them, these are the ones I ran into pretty much on a nightly basis.
There were some interesting folks along the way.
There was a pilot from Corporate Air named John that was flying on some sort of medical exemption, and I believe he had his condition since birth, he had problems walking, but could fly a Lear at the Warp factor just like the rest of us. Corporate Air also had an ex-south vietnam fellow that came over after the fall and he actually quit flying and opened up a restaraunt in Ellington CT after he recieved his court awarded payment after having survived a inflight breakup of an Aero Commander somewhere over the Carolina's several years earlier.
There was Smiley (Slimey Sh:thook) from Jet Courier that pulled up in front of a Cessna 310 that parked in "his" spot at the MDW hub and pushed the power up untill it was at least 100 feet down the ramp. He then sat in the Lear for an hour while the 310 pilot fumed.
There was the pilot that flew for Devarian out of SFO that took about a year to turn into the fairer sex.
Ther was the MSP based crew for Jet Courier that argued for weeks about who's job it was to check the engine oil, and with everbody being aware of the arguement they ran the left out of oil making the 23 come to an early grave.
The flying was a little wilder on the private side with much tighter deadlines and much larger pressure being applied to make the times.
The FED flying was in need of the Lears speed but the pressure was much less.
The notable operations were Jet Courier and Air Continental for the true 23 and 25, 350 to the Marker RVR 1800 folks. The real slow folks was the outfit out of FLL that PDQ hired, they could not make a deadline with a 100 knot tailwind much less overcome the challenges of the day.
Airnet eventially was formed by a merger of Jet Courier, Air Continental, Dixie Air and PDQ. Jeff the Chief Pilot from Air Continental stayed at Airnet probably the longest.
I've got more stories than you have time to read.
Several folks died along the way, and each of them I remember with a smile.
