Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) Sticker

Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) was a United States airline headquartered in San Diego, California that operated from 1949 to 1988. It was the first large discount airline in the United States. PSA called itself “The World’s Friendliest Airline” and painted a smile on the nose of its airplanes, known as the PSA Grinningbirds. The Los Angeles Times called PSA “practically the unofficial flag carrier airline of California for almost 40 years” as the airline initially operated as an intrastate airline wholly within the state of California. This strategy which avoided the steep costs from federal regulation would later serve as the model for Southwest Airlines, doing in Texas what PSA had done in California.