We had a local (Alaska based) Ryan Air (I assumed the owner's first name was 'Ryan'. First time I flew 'em way way back when I was an Alaska newbie, I took a jet flight to Fairbanks, then found a kind of shack you had to walk to for Ryan, weighed in with luggage on bathroom scales, and out to the fourteen passenger Otter (made in Canada). I never had a problem with our Ryan Air despite learning that some co-workers called it "Dyin' with Ryan". Even that time we took off from Shishmaref clearly overloaded and spent the flight at about five hundred feet altitude. Later on they had a major disaster in one of their heavily loaded planes where there was too much reindeer meat stored too far aft. The center of gravity was compromised. Those folk truly died with Ryan and for this and maybe other causes they are no more. We had another airline, Frontier, again an Alaska original. I think they went under for business reasons, but not before my brother wrote a song about them to the tune of 'Barret's Privateers'.
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