Back in 1989, Igor Dmitrovsky filed the paperwork to incorporate an airline in the state of New York under the name Baltia Airlines. The airline was supposed to start flying from New York to Saint Petersburg in what was then still the Soviet Union.
In the late 1980's the Soviet Union had started to gradually open up under the policies of Glasnost and Perestroika, and this allowed the US and the USSR to be more friendly towards each other. A treaty was eventually signed that allowed for more flights between the two countries.
Baltia saw an opportunity to pick up some of the new routes before others did, and got approval to be the only US airline to operate flights to Saint Petersburg, Riga, Minsk, and Tbilisi!
Things looked up for Baltia, but there were just two problems, the airline didn't have any money or even an airplane! By now it's 1991 and Baltia hires an investment banker to find investors to fund the airline.
But then the worst thing possible happens to Baltia. There is a coup attempt in the Soviet Union. The coup failed in the end, but obviously people aren't going to invest in an airline that plans to fly to a country that is falling apart. So in the end Baltia doesn't raise enough money to start their airline.
At this point the only real thing that Baltia has, is a small office inside of terminal one at New York's JFK airport. And then to make things just a little bit worse for the airline, the Soviet Union collapses, which is basically the end of all their plans.
But Baltia isn't ready to give up just yet!
Five years go by and Baltia is actually able to find some new investors, and now they're finally ready to get started. They go through all the paperwork that is necessary to begin flying and apply for FAA certification. Next they buy two Boeing 747-200 aircraft, and thing start to look up for the airline.
To raise the final funds that they need, they decided to list on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Unfortunately for them, the listing process was so disastrously mismanaged that they didn't raise any money. They literally weren't sure for about two years if they were actually a public company or not!
So for the next decade they keep looking for more investors, and they always found a few people willing to invest, but never enough. The other issue that they were still dealing with was the FAA certification process. They applied multiple times, but always failed to obtain it.
At some points it looked like they were so close to flying, even going as far as training cabin crew in 2014. They had gotten rid of one the 747's, and painted the other in a Baltia livery.
It was also around this time that Baltia begins to rethink its strategy of flying non-stop from New York to Saint Petersburg. At the time there were zero flight between the two cities, and to think that Baltia was going to fill a Boeing 747 one of the largest airplanes in the world on this route was a little optimistic.
So, new plan!
They were going to lease a couple of regional jets, set up a hub in Baltimore, and fly hourly to Trenton, Islip, and Albany.
What was the reasoning for this route structure?
Baltimore, BAL. Trenton, T. Islip, I. Albany, A. Put them all together and you get BALTIA!
Yes, this is not a joke, they literally chose their route network based on their name.
Well guess what, that plan also didn't work out! Don't forget that at this point investors have poured tens of millions of dollars into the company!
They then tried and failed to buy a small airline that actually flew, before rebranding themselves to US Global Airways.
At this point the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) catches on to the airline's blunders and files charges against their executives for misleading investors, and revokes their ability to sell stock.
Since then the airline came up with a couple more crazy ideas, like flying to the Caribbean, leasing Boeing 767's and flying across the Atlantic to other European destinations, but in the end nothing happened. Since then the company has been silent and hasn't released any updates. Their website has also been taken down.
Most likely the company finally went out of business, but not before scamming their investors out of millions of dollars!
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this crazy story!