Shoup Airlines

The Unveiling! (zzzzz)

Ladies and Gentleman, I would like to introduce (reintroduce to some of you) Shoup Airlines. A small outfit that has spanned the nation since 1997 providing instruction, sight seeing, passenger travel, aerobatics, and much more. First, some background.

The airline began with an inaugural flight from Santa Ana to Santa Barbara with four guys who would, unwillingly, become the Chief Officers of the company. They’re not important so we’ll introduce them later. The operation caught some interest and started with some basic flying around the summer and winter holidays, but it was difficult getting a start-up off the ground in Southern California.

So the company packed up and moved….to North Dakota. Rent was cheap, airplanes were ample, and growth had a real potential. SA began to grow quite rapidly adding flight instruction and aerobatics to their passenger flying capabilities. Here’s a little trivia: most don’t even know that there was a small Space Travel department in the works, but was quickly mothballed with costs skyrocketing (pun intended). In 200o, the company realized that it was growing too big for North Dakota and began looking for a larger market.

Someone beat them to the punch. Out of nowhere, another airline swooped in and bought out Shoup early in 2001. ACA absorbed the pilots and transferred them to places like Boston, MA and Dulles, VA. For four years everyone was content, but then the evil empire, who is never happy, changed everything and no one was content. ACA decided to break free and show their true identity. Almost everyone was content again, but the contentment would be short lived.

In the early days of 2005 Independence Air knew they had to shed some extra weight if they wanted to stay aloft. So, in February they set their phasers to kill and locked on anything that moved. Shoup Airlines twitched and was suddenly solo again. Having to sign a ‘no compete on the East Coast’ contract with Independence, SA decided to return to it’s origins and is reopening the doors in sunny Southern California.

We want to make the airline as dynamic and unique as possible, yet keep the company traditions of old. Shoup Airlines is proud to bring back all the original services. We will even be adding some new services soon including an in house maintenance department and a helicopter division. The site itself will be undergoing many changes in the near future, this is just the framework, but we wanted to get the word out. We thank you in advance for your patience. We hope you enjoy your time here. Please feel free to comment, suggest improvements, or even reserve a flight!

Legal note: For those of you scratching your head (this means you, FAA), there is no real Shoup Airlines, never was, never will be. It is just an entity in one guy’s head that was spurned by another guy’s idea. It is a venture that deftly disguises it’s true identity: a blog. Yep! That’s right, it is a blog, a whole blog, and nothing but a blog. Thank you.