Headquartered at Poughkeepsie, NY., Command Airways was a successful commuter airline that also had very lucrative contracts with the IBM Corporation. The latter operation primarily involved flights from the mid-Hudson area to Burlington, VT. As Command's route structure expanded, the need for a larger aircraft became evident. The 19-seat Twin Otters that Command Airways operated were suplemented in July, 1976, by 30-seat Shorts SD-330s. The chunky twin-turboprop from Belfast, Northern Ireland fitted nicely with Command's new Poughkeepsie-LaGuardia route, and its White Plains-Boston link. Passenger traffic doubled between 1981 and 1985, by which time Albany, NY., and Lebanon, NH., had been added to the Command network.

Recognized by Air Trasport World magazine in 1985 as the Commuter/Regional Airline of the Year, the operator went on to add the ATR-42 and SD-360 to its fleet. Command airways was sold to American Airlines for $24 million on 30 September 1988.

Much of the information above was obtained from Commuter Airlines of the United States by R.E.G. Davies and I.E. Quastler, Copyright 1995 Smithsonian Institute Press.

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