Prime Airlines

Prime Airlines was formed by Heavylift Cargo Airlines (HC Airlines) as a passenger charter carrier. Initially offering its sole aircraft on an ad-hoc basis from its base at East Midlands Airport (EMA) near Nottingham. Originally the airline was to be called Breeze but the company had difficulties in securing the name for operation. Finally the name Prime Airlines was chosen. With the assistance of former Transaer managers HC Airlines leased its sole aircraft an A300B4-203 and recruitment began for cabin crew. As the airline only had one aircraft a total of 27 cabin crew were hired for the start of operations in mid-2001. The company had no need to recruit flight crew as HC Airlines operated the A300B4 in cargo configuration and simply cross utilized the crew. Once the airline obtained its AOC it began operations for a number of British inclusive tour operators and the military flying to destinations around Europe and the Middle East. After 9/11 the company suffered with lack of contracts and a second blow came when an American Airlines A300 crashed in New York. Like most airlines at this time Prime had to make redundancies and cut its cabin crew numbers in half. The start of 2002 looked better for Prime Airlines as once again ad-hoc charter contacts once again came flooding in. The company started to plan for a bright future and looked at adding extra aircraft to its fleet.