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Back in 1989, a guy by the name of Igor Dmitrovsky filed the paperwork to incorporate a small
little business in the state of New York.
This company would enter the metal cylinder organism transport business under the name
Baltia Airlines.
The airline was to fly from New York, US to St Petersburg, USSR—that’s a throwback.
In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was starting
to become less united, soviet, and socialist.
Simultaneously, the US and USSR were starting to get a little friendlier with each other.
The USSR even kinda, sort of, maybe supported the US and its allies’ group project of
obliterating a few thousand of Saddam Hussein’s closest friends in the Gulf War.
How we got from Baltia Airline to Saddam Hussein in a few sentences, I’m not sure, but I
am sure that, with these big boys’ cold war being more of a slightly chilled dispute
at this point, a treaty was signed that allowed for more flights between the US and USSR.
With that, Baltia saw an opportunity to snatch up some of the routes before others did and
was somehow granted approval to be the only US airline to operate flights to St Petersburg,
Riga, Kiev, Minsk, and Tbilisi.
“Cool, cool, cool,” said Baltia.
“What was that the thing we needed—right, moneyyyy!”
Hence Baltia started the, “please give us money,” phase of business establishment
and did I mention it’s now 1991?
Baltia hired an investment banker—a job with the description of, “you give me money
and then I’ll find you money,” but then, curveball, there’s a coup in the USSR!
It failed but still, to this, investors went, “ehhhhhh, maybe I’ll invest in an airline
not entirely banking on operating to a place where there are active coup d’état attempts.
For example, like literally almost any other airline in the world.”
So yeah, Baltia didn’t get enough money.
The only real thing that they had at the time was a small office at JFK Terminal One in
New York.
Oh, and then the Soviet Union collapses.
Anyways, five years of nothingness passes and then Baltia finally has a little more
luck getting money.
At this point, they’re ready to get going.
They register with the DOT, they set up at JFK Terminal 4, they start getting FAA certification,
they do all the other initialism related things, and they even buy some airplanes—two former
Cathay Pacific 747-200’s.
This probably seems impressive but you can actually get old airplanes like these fairly
easily.
Basically, they cost so much to keep in working order that airlines will sell them for next
to nothing, at least in airplane terms.
For example, this website has a 747 for sale for only a few million dollars and they do
go for even less.
My kickstarter to become the world’s first YouTube channel turned budget airline is coming
soon.
I’ll call it, “Half as Airworthy.”
Anyways, now with a plane, things were looking up for Baltia.
To raise the final funds needed, the plan was to list publicly on the NASDAQ stock exchange.
Unfortunately, the listing process was so disastrously mismanaged that they got no money
and, for a period of two years, they actually were not sure whether they were a public company
or not.
I know that sounds ridiculously made up, but this is according to the company’s official
DOT certification application.
Anyways, for the next decade and a bit they keep looking for money and they always got
some, meaning they did have investors, but never enough.
The other issue is that they tried multiple times to get FAA certification, which is needed
to fly, and always failed.
At points it looked like they were getting close to flying, even going as far to train
flight attendants in 2014.
They had gotten rid of one of the 747’s already but still had the other.
It was around this time that they realized the St Petersburg plan was maybe not as genius
as they once thought.
There are zero flights from St Petersburg to the US and to think that Baltia was going
to fill one of the largest planes out there with passengers on the non-stop flight was
absurd.
There just isn’t the demand.
So, new plan.
They were going to lease some small regional jets, set up a hub in Baltimore and fly hourly
to Trenton, Islip, and Albany and what was the reasoning for this route structure?
Baltimore, BAL; Trenton, T; Islip, I; Albany, A. They literally chose their route network
based off their name.
Tens of millions of dollars had been invested in the company at this point and this 100%
is not a joke, at least it’s not my joke.
For some strange reason that plan didn’t go anywhere, they tried and failed to buy
a small airline that actually flew, they rebranded as USGlobal Airways, the security and exchange
commission caught on to their shenanigans, filed charges against their executives, and
revoked their ability to sell stock, but they’re still going at it!
USGlobal Airways has a website, executives, investors, and all and their goal is now to
start flying between Stewart International Airport, near New York City, and Europe.
Their website says, “USGlobal Airways strives to establish itself in the airline industry
as the United States’ premier international and customer-centric air carrier.”
Points for optimism, I guess.
By now, Baltia/USGlobal has been labeled by many as a scam.
At the very least, its investors have not seen great returns on their investments.
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