The Cavern City Air Terminal

they used to drop bombs.” “After the war, the flights to Denver were discon- tinued and newflights were added going to San Antonio and Kansas City, each making several stops,” Chandler continues.“Flights to El Paso and Albu- querque remained.Then there was a small com- muter carrier named Bison Airlines which served the city for a couple of years in the late 1960s, as well. In 1963, Continental transferred its route authority for Carlsbad to Trans Texas Airways,which modified the eastbound flights to go directly to Dallas.Trans Tex- as later changed their name to Texas International Airlines and replaced the DC3s with the Convair CV- 600 Turboprop aircraft.After that, in the 1970s, for a short time,Texas International upgraded all their flights with the 85-seat Douglas DC 9-10 jets, but reverted to Convair 600s after about a year. “In 1979,Air Midwest took over and they had flights to Albuquerque, and Midland and Odessa, Texas, using a 17-seat Swearingen Metroliner. In 1984,Mesa Airlines had the same routes using Beechcraft 99 and Beechcraft 1900 airliners. For a very short time in the spring of 1987, Continental Express, operated byTrans Colorado Airlines, served the city with flights to Albuquerque and El Paso, also using Metroliners.Mesa served from that time to 2007; but then, they grew too large and discon- tinued serving small cities with small aircraft. From 2007–2015,we had PacificWings, the parent com- pany of NewMexico Airlines, and they flew a Cessna 208 Caravan to Albuquerque.They tried flights to El Paso and Midland, but deemed that they weren’t profitable enough. In 2015, Boutique Air took over. They use an 8-seat Pilatus PC-12 aircraft and have