I read the news this morning that Aloha Airlines was throwing in the towel, the inter-island passenger carrier a victim of rising fuel costs and a price war with a new upstart discount airline providing passenger service around the Hawaiian Islands.

The airline shut down passenger service today and posted the obligatory "So long" message on its website. At first I thought wow, this is a big deal. I remember flying Aloha Airlines from Honolulu to Maui on vacation way back when.

And then nostalgia slipped aside when I looked up on the Internet and found a Wikipedia list that documents all of the defunct airlines of the United States.

Pan Am, Eastern Airlines, Western Airlines TWA, Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA, the planes with the smiley face on them) and Braniff all carry name recognition for those of us that have been flying "the friendly skies" for years, and all are out of business now. The list of airlines that have shut down also features scores of smaller regional carriers that have fallen victims to everything from corporate mismanagement and a turbulent ecomony to rising fuel prices and competition with no-frills, low-budget airlines.

Earlier this month the list of defunct regional carriers grew by one when Big Sky Airlines which operated out of Butte ceased operations on March 8th, another victim like Aloha Airlines and countless other airlines of economic conditions and rising fuel costs.

Aloha Airlines and Big Sky Airlines will be missed by some with passing nostalgia of that one time they flew on those airlines, but here right now, with an increasingly volatile American economy and fuel prices that have continued to shoot through the atmosphere, it will be interesting to see how long it will be before the government weighs in on whether or not its going to take steps to save the airline industry from financial collapse.

If nothing is done I fear we're going to be saying Aloha to more airlines in the coming days.