Eastern Airlines bought out by Swift Air, both ad-hoc charter operators, with 20 aircraft, and the Eastern brand stays, big loser is MRJ90.

Eastern Airlines has been bought by ad hoc charter (large groups and sport teams) operator Swift Air, with the Eastern brand staying to replace the Swift brand.

Eastern Airlines has been also very active in the ad-hoc charter market, especially with sports teams, flying the Florida Panthers, Oakland A's, Portland Timbers, San Francisco Giants, so a good synergy fir between Swift Air and Eastern Airlines.

The original Eastern Air Lines brand (Above Photo) was strong, as that airline started in 1926 and went bust in 1991.

Eastern Airlines today has 7 x B737-800/700's and was formed in 2011 and started operations in 2015, with plans to be a scheduled airline out of Miami, and ordered 10 x B737-8's and 20 x MR90's, most likely both orders will be cancelled shortly, no need for B737Max when doing low utilization ad hoc charters and MRJ's are no good if you have no airline to feed.

Eastern has been in trouble from the start of this year as the Cuban market started to tank and other airlines pulled out of that market as well, and lessors took back their B737-800's, as Trump's threats to over turn Obama's Cuban policy and just 'over' optimism on how popular Cuba would be.

Glad the brand remains, just a shame that Ed Wegel ex-CEO of Eastern Air Lines could not make this airline work that he founded, as he left October, 2016.

He had a brilliant career with airlines (Manager at PanAm, Eastern Air Lines, co-founder Atlantic Coast Airlines, President BWIA, Board member of LIAT, Co-founder PeoplExpress II, CEO US Airways Express), and now partner and founder of AVi Capital, a new aircraft lessor going places.