Apple Vacations decided to set up its own airline in order to have more control of the product thye have to offer to vacationers. USA3000 Airlines is the airline they have formed and have 2 brand new A320's to date with five more to come in 2002 and a total of 14 due by 2004. They will be based in PHL, ORD, EWR, BWI and PIT. Rumor has it that five 330's are on the drawing board to do the Apple Vacations Hawaii flying out of SFO and LAX as well as Carribean flying out of BOS and European flying out of JFK. They plan not to have to use contractors again and to have their own planes, crews and flight attendants operate all their own vacations. Big plans it appears, and all after 9/11!
The 320's can be seen in PHL right now parked on Atlantic Aviations ramp and after the 28th one will be in EWR and the other in PHL. Nice colour scheme.
They will be flying to Liberia, Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Dom. Republic, Nassau and Cozumel to start.
Their regs is N260AV and N261AV and have the numbers all the way up to N280AV booked. N260AV is named City of Philadelphia and N261AV is named Sainte Jean.
From a pilots standpoint they have decided, I believe, to allow as many jumpseaters as theree are empty seats in the back of the plane, which is nice. Their callsign is "GETAWAY".