The airline was formed in 1961 by
Richard A. Henson as Henson Aviation, a
fixed-base operator in
Hagerstown, Maryland. It began its first scheduled flights to
Washington National Airport in 1962 under the Hagerstown Commuter name, later changed to Henson Airlines.
Allegheny Airlines (which became
US Airways, which in turn has now merged with
American Airlines) and Henson began one of the world's first
code sharing arrangements in 1967. Henson re-branded itself as an
Allegheny Commuter carrier using
Beechcraft 99 aircraft. It initially developed a route structure serving Washington D.C., Philadelphia and Baltimore, while establishing a new headquarters for Allegheny Commuter at
Salisbury, Maryland in 1968. In the 1970s, the airline upgraded to
Short 330 and
de Havilland Canada Dash 7 turboprops. In 1983,
Piedmont Aviation bought Henson Airlines and re-branded the airline as "Henson, The Piedmont Regional Airline". Under Piedmont's control, the airline expanded rapidly, particularly in
Florida. Both were purchased by the USAir Group in 1987 with Piedmont absorbed two years later and Henson's aircraft repainted in USAir Express livery. The 1980s saw rapid growth by the company with the upgrade of its fleet to the de Havilland Canada Dash 8 aircraft and fleet expansion. With the growth in capacity, the airline expanded to
Florida, including numerous intrastate routes in Florida, and it opened a maintenance facility in
Jacksonville. The Piedmont name was resurrected in 1993, when USAir (the erstwhile Allegheny Airlines that became US Airways) renamed Henson to "Piedmont Airlines", to protect the Piedmont brand name, which could be used by others if not exercised in trade use for a period of time. USAir continued this practice by changing the name of its two other wholly owned regional airline subsidiaries, Jetstream and Suburban Airlines, to
PSA Airlines and
Allegheny Airlines, respectively (
Pacific Southwest Airlines was the name of a California-based airline merged into USAir). In 1997, USAir was renamed US Airways, and Piedmont and Allegheny were likewise re-branded as US Airways Express carriers. US Airways merged
Allegheny Airlines into Piedmont in 2004. ==Operations==