NORTH AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY


US AIR is the product of mergers among regional carriers Lake Central, Allegheny, Mohawk, Piedmont--and Pacific Southwest.

NORTHWEST is the result of Wisconsin Central becoming North Central, which is taken over by Republic, which then merges with Northwest Orient to become Northwest.

DELTA eats Southern, Atlantic Southeast, Northeast, Western, and the remnants of Pan-American.

AMERICAN picks up Trans-Carribean, Reno Air, and the remnants of TWA; basically it is still what it was to start with.

CONTINENTAL has always been Continental, but along the way has taken over Texas International, Frontier, People Express, and NY Air.

UNITED is simply United.

Which means that though all the other major airlines are, each of them, a union of at least several parts, only the one called UNITED is actually one from its inception. US AIR put together a patchwork of regional airlines to become a national airline. AMERICAN has always been a national carrier; its regional acquisitions have all been minor.

DELTA was a regional airline, originally. But then it made the geograhical shopping rounds and became a national airline--with a regional name, still. And NORTHWEST did the same. At least DELTA's headquarters is in Atlanta; NORTHWEST's is in Minneapolis.

There's a conclusion to be drawn from all this, but I don't know what it is. Maybe it's just that names don't mean much. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, there was for many years a store called "The VACUUM Shop," and a photo-processing place called for some reason "MONOCHROME"--with each of the letters on its sign in a different color. The University of Michigan boasts asign that reads, "No Unauthorised Loitering Allowed." The Thompson Science building at Western Kentucky University has a "North Wing," a "South Wing"--and a "Central Wing." A shop in Louisville advertises "Tattoos While You Wait." There are rivers in Britain called "Avon"--which is a word for stream, and there are two towns named "Street," and another named hill three times over. There's a town on Krete, too, with a strange name: "Athanatos"--which means "un-dead." And there's a town in western Tennessee, founded in the midst of nowhere in the 1860s by five immigrant families from the West of Ireland: they named it "Paris."