The bidding for Piedmont was a little more complicated then just US Air Group and Norfolk Southern (CSX did not own a piece of PI, NS did). US Air and NS got into a little bidding war and ol' Carl Icahn took a shot at buying US Air right in the middle of it. It ended up that US Air won over NS for Piedmont and for reasons I don't recall Icahn went away. As for the name changes, it was my understanding that once the airline left the Allegheny's they felt they needed to change the name (The poor slobs in the NE were not going to be fooled but why start off with a bad name out west and down south where no one knew any better). They started their westward and southward expansion in the mid to late 70's (mostly post deregulation but I think some before), changed to the tri-color maroon scheme on white bodies with the Allegheny name, then switched to US Air in 1979 if my memory serves me right. (Their motto: Fly the USA on US Air) Sometime around or with the name change they went to bare metal with the tri-color maroon stripe and logo, which stayed until August of 1989 when the merger with PI was complete and they went to the Red and Blue logo with the dark blue and red pin striped tails. (Flying through PIT some time, check out the colors. That whole airport is colored for the old Red and Blue scheme) And it was a Red US with Blue Air. Shawn At 10:20 AM 8/12/2003 -0700, you wrote: >Allegheny (a.k.a. Agony) become U.S. Air before it "acquired" Piedmont. >(Interesting tidbit: the other competitor for Piedmont was CSX, formerly >known as the Chessie System for you RR buffs). The reason for the name >change was the subject of much caustic and snide comments -- shortly after >the change, on a flight where everything was going wrong, an F/A said in >frustration, "it's still Allegheny." > >When U.S. Air took over Piedmont, it changed its red U.S. Air logo to a >logo where "U.S." was blue and "Air" still red (or maybe it was the >other way around). That was part of their way of "integrating" Piedmont. >It did look nicer. America's Volunteer Firefighters, the best bargain in municipal government