| Airline: | Red Baron Airlines |
| Parent: | Roberson Air Inc. |
| Founded: | June 11, 1979 |
| Ceased: | June 13, 1980 |
| Headquarters: | West Palm Beach, FL |
| Key People: | Clive E. Roberson, M.D. and Rudolph P. Scheerer, M.D. |
| Hubs: | Palm Beach International Airport |
| Destinations: | Gainesville, FL, Tallahassee, FL |
Red Baron Airlines was a small U.S. regional airline based at Palm Beach International Airport and operating solely within Florida.
Red Baron Airlines was started as a joint venture between Clive E. Roberson and Rudolph P. Scheerer.[1] It was a member of the Commuter Airline Association of America. It offered weekday flights starting in the morning from West Palm Beach, Florida and stopping in Gainesville, Florida before continuing to Tallahassee, Florida. In the afternoon, the route was the reverse. The airline was expecting to benefit from the large number of students that would travel to/from the University of Florida in Gainesville and Florida State University in Tallahassee.[2] In May 1980 a Federal Aviation Administration Special Investigative Team found discrepancies in the company's maintenance manuals and recommended that a recertification be required. On May 23, 1980, the company voluntarily ceased operations while the discrepancies were corrected. An on-scene inspection verified these corrections, and its air carrier certificate was returned on May 30, 1980. [3]
On June 13, 1980 Scheerer Air acquired 100% of Roberson Air Inc., renaming the airline to Florida Commuter Airlines. Three months later on September 12, 1980 one of their two Douglas DC-3s crashed in the Bahamas with a serious loss of life (Florida Commuter Airlines Flight 65). A few months after that the airline name changed again to Southern Airlines, but by late 1981 all operations had ceased. [4]