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Mesa goes all turbine

In 1983, Larry and Janie Risley bought their first Beechcraft C-99 Airliner. A salesman at Beechcraft convinced Larry the airplane would be much more cost effective than the piston-powered airplanes and he was proven right. Shortly after that purchase, Mesa started off-loading their piston engine aircraft and followed up with more C-99 purchases. One of the early C-99s was serial number U-203, which had been previously owned by SunWest Airlines (N262SW). Notice in the first two pictures that the engine nacelles were painted on top in the same crème color as the fuselage (the official paint color was called Autumn Smoke). That livery was changed later to having green on top of the nacelles so that the exhaust streak from the PT-6 engines would be less noticeable. You can see the new paint scheme used on later Mesa airplanes in the photo of the C-99 parked in the Bullpen parking area by the commuter terminal at the Stapleton airport (circa 1988) in the third photo. Also notice the name painted above the side windows was changed from Mesa Air to Mesa Airlines.







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Jerry Hurt
Jerry Hurt
Jun 03, 2023

David, when were the 99's gone in favor of the 1900's?


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indleggen
Jun 29, 2023
Replying to

The 99s and 1900s flew at the same time, The C99s were replaced by the Beechcraft 1300s. The last C99 flew in October 1990.

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