Colgan Airways Pilot Hat Badge 3rd Issue

Manassas, VA 1971-2012

Charles J. Colgan founded fixed base operator Colgan Airways Corporation at Manassas Airport in 1965. It began scheduled service under contract with IBM in 1970. In 1986 it was sold to Presidential Airways. After Presidential went defunct in 1991, Colgan and his son, Michael J., restarted the service under the name Colgan Air. It was established and started operations on December 1, 1991. On July 1, 1997 it became a feeder for Continental Airlines, operating under the name Continental Connection. On December 11, 1999 Colgan left the Continental system and became exclusively a US Airways Express carrier. In 2007, Colgan Air was acquired by Pinnacle Airlines Corp. a regional airline doing business as Northwest Airlink. The name Continental Express was retained. Pinnacle entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy on April 1, 2012 and announced that they would close the Colgan operation and the last flight flown by Colgan Airways was on September 5, 2012.