ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, February 28, 1997 TAG: 9702280080
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TED REED KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
Eighteen years after Allegheny Airlines became USAir, the airline is being rechristened US Airways.
Officially, the change took place at 12:01 Thursday morning. That's when everyone from reservations agents to airport pagers was to begin using the new name. Red-eye flights Wednesday night departed as USAir, but arrived as US Airways.
The company will repaint its planes, now gray with a red stripe, so that the top half is blue and the bottom is gray. The entire fleet will carry the new colors within three years.
At the New York Stock Exchange, the name was changed Monday. Over the coming months, airplane interiors, ticket jackets and coffee cups will be changed.
Officials at US Airways said the conversion to the new image will take some time. The company plans to allow three years to repaint 185 of the airline's fleet of 390 planes. The rest are older and scheduled to be replaced. Their replacements will be painted the new colors at the factory, according to a company official.
Besides the initial cost, painting the planes - now unpainted except for the name and logo - will cost the airline an estimated 82 cents per flight. That's about $4,000 a day for the whole fleet in extra fuel costs because of the drag created by the paint.
There is no additional cost for the new stationery, coffee cups, napkins, ticket jackets and all the other things the airline already was using, according to a company official. He said the company has been ordering the new logo and name on these items in recent months as the old supplies needed to be replenished.
US Airways estimates the total cost of converting to the new name and image at $15 million. The company said the cost of painting the planes would be approximately $7 million, and the balance of the money would be spent changing the signs at airports and ticket offices.
US AIRWAYS IN ROANOKEz The name change is noticable now on some small signs and on workers' uniform lapel pins, but it will probably be another two weeks before the airline's customer service counters sport the new name, said Jim Haney, manager of US Airways operations at Roanoke Regional Airport.
Also, airline employees began answering phones using the new name Thursday.
Haney said only four of some 400 US Airways planes have been painted with the new logo so far and they have not been through Roanoke yet.
- GREG EDWARDS
LENGTH: Medium: 54 linesby CNB