Air Illinois  Handley Page HP-137 Jetstream   N11DN                  (c/n  204)

                               

                                      Another take-off from a sub-par postcard obtained from Air Illinois in the late 1970s. 
                                      In December 1977 the airline purchased a fleet of three Jetstreams from South Coast
                                      Air Transport (SCAT), a Natchez, Mississippi based outfit founded by Andrew Pea-
                                      body to take over Southern Airways' Martin 404 flights between Natchez, Jackson
                                      and New Orleans.  SCAT  folded in 1977 being unable to compete with Southern
                                      which, by then, was operating DC-9s.   Air Illinois evidently liked the Jetstreams, since
                                      they added five more in the late 1970s.    N11DN was not a new machine. It was built
                                      in 1969 as G-AWVI and had been sold by North American distributor International
                                      Jetstream Corporation to Cal State Airlines who, oddly, promptly stored it for three years
                                      in Reno, Nevada.    It then appeared to be the subject of several  repossession cases before
                                      SCAT leased it early in 1977 just before they folded.    Air Illinois flew them out of Chicago's
                                      Meigs field to fifteen or so smaller cities in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Iowa