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Founded | 1947 | ||||||
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Ceased operations | 2010 | ||||||
Hubs | Miami International Airport | ||||||
Fleet size | 7 | ||||||
Destinations | 31 | ||||||
Parent company | MatlinPatterson | ||||||
Headquarters | Miami-Dade County, Florida | ||||||
Key people | Luis Soto (President)[3] | ||||||
Website | www.arrowcargo.com |
Arrow Air was an American passenger and cargo airline based in Building 712 on the grounds of Miami International Airport (MIA) in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida. At different times over the years, it operated over 90 weekly scheduled cargo flights, had a strong charter business and at one point operated scheduled international and domestic passenger flights. Its main base was Miami International Airport. Arrow Air ceased operations on June 29, 2010, and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on July 1, 2010. It was then liquidated.
Arrow Air founder George E. Batchelor was born of Native American ancestry in Shawnee, Oklahoma in 1920. He became a pilot, and the loss of his first wife and son in a plane crash did not stop him from moving to Compton, California, in 1947 and establishing Arrow Air. The carrier established its base at Torrance Municipal Airport, Lomita, California, from where it operated Douglas DC-3's on passenger and cargo services within the state. The airline halted scheduled operations in 1953 due to Batchelor's perception of an anti-competitive regulatory environment in the air transport business. However, Batchelor continued leasing aircraft, often with crews, to other small airlines.
Batchelor moved Arrow Air to South Florida in 1964. Considered a pioneer in both south Florida's aviation industry and in the Latin American air cargo market, Batchelor would amass a considerable fortune and donate much of it to homeless and children's causes before dying in July 2002.
On May 26, 1981, Arrow Air relaunched as a charter airline under Miami's Batchelor Enterprises, whose aviation operations included fixed-base operator (FBO) Batch Air and International Air Leases, Inc., Arrow's parent company. (Batch Air eventually became owned by an employee group and was sold to Greenwich Air in 1987 for more than $30 million.) Arrow added scheduled passenger services in April 1982, beginning with California-Montego Bay.
Low fares were causing the company to lose money. In October 1984, it canceled several routes, including Tampa–London. At the same time, the company reoriented its route structure from an east-west alignment to a north-south one, reported Aviation Week & Space Technology. San Juan, Puerto Rico, where the company was building a new hub, was the center of the scheduled network, and by the end of 1985 Arrow Air was flying between SJU and Montreal, Toronto, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Orlando and Miami. In 1985, more than one million people flew on board Arrow Air to 245 destinations in 72 countries with the majority of these flights being unscheduled charter service.