If you are an aviation fan, chances are you have spent lots of time at your local airport watching, and maybe photographing arrivals and departures. In doing so the one thing that is inevitable is that new airlines will come, and others will go never to be seen again. The reasons for this are myriad. However most are financial in nature. An airline may determine flying into a particular location is no longer profitable enough to continue operations there. One of the most common is the failure of the airline in general. They go into bankruptcy, and sell off their assets to satisfy creditors. They may also be absorbed by a larger competitor. The other common reason is mergers. Merging with a larger airline, or one of similar size might make both who may be struggling on their own into a larger more solid competitor.
Whatever the reason for their departure might be, we tend to miss their presence. Below are a few examples of some that have disappeared from flight patterns of Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
There are many more than pictured in this article, most are on a bad hard drive which I currently do not have access to. This is just a sampling.
joel