Rich International
I'm not proud of it, but I was instrumental in bringing down Rich International in 1996. My wife was an FA on Rich and a "Stewardess" on the Otis Spunkmeyer DC-3s. I was a DC-3 Capt. We were all part time. We didn't go anywhere; we were in "showbusiness". We tried to recreate the elegance of airline travel.
Ex TWA Super Connie and 707 water wagon stew, Jen was longing to "return to those wonderful days of yesteryear" for $7.50/hr. block. So she hired on with Rich.
Well, she joined just at the time when passengers were rioting at SFO and LAX because of delayed or cancelled flights. Passengers weren't quite so cowed in those days. Arrest and jail wasn't in the picture and Rich was in the news daily.
It turns out that Rich was trying to fly routes and schedules that required 20+ aircraft with only 14 or 15. If a pilot refused to take a flight because of a mechanical, he was told to fly or be fired, so SFO to HNL and back with flaps inop happened twice that I know of. Once the FA failed to disarm the slide before opening the door at HNL. You can imagine the rest.
When Jen didn't get home on time, I was pretty sure that they turned her and the rest of the crew for a second SFO-HNL-SFO run. Duty time???
More than half the L10s had everything labeled in Arabic. Hydraulics and pressurization were marginal. If a pilot walked in off the street and said he was typed in the Lockheed, he was to told, "There's your airplane, you're going to Frankfurt.
Well, mishaps piled upon near disasters and I really got worried about Jen's safety, so I rang up Rich's FAA Ops inspector in Miami. He tried to brush me off, but when I asked how he spelled his name he perked up and asked why. I told him it was for the article in the San Francisco Chronicle.
The next day, FAA was riding on every flight. They grounded several pilots after one ride. Some had no L1011 type ratings. They found phony or "missing" maintenance records, plus a long list of other violations.
Two days later Rich was history.
I fear that may be happening again.