North American Airlines Group

North American Airlines Group or North American Group, dba North American Airlines was a "combine", a group of US irregular air carriers and related companies under common control that acted as an early scheduled low-cost carrier in the period 1949–1957. It can be seen as a form of virtual airline.

North American was, at the time, highly controversial. It was a rogue airline, lucrative for the four partners who controlled it, bigger and more profitable than some of the smaller trunk carriers of the day yet operating in open circumvention of the law. In 1955, the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), the now-defunct Federal agency that, at the time, tightly regulated almost all US commercial air transport, revoked the group's right to operate. The group stayed in operation for almost another two years by challenging this in court, shutting down in 1957 after the US Supreme Court refused to hear a final appeal. A year earlier, in 1956, the group lost a trademark dispute with aircraft manufacturer North American Aviation, so for the last year of its existence was known as Trans American.