What made Baltia Airlines the worst carrier in the world?

In 27 years, it didn’t manage to fly a single passenger. Not one. And it did not, therefore, manage to make a single penny of revenue (it did, however, accumulate debt of more than $119 million, reports claim).

Now, after countless setbacks, the airline is making a last-ditch attempt to get a paying passenger off the ground.

But not as Baltia. The beleaguered airline is choosing to rebrand itself – as USGlobal.

Firstly, a bit of background. Founded in 1989, Baltia aimed to offer non-stop flights from New York to St Petersburg.

Plans to fly from the US to Russia never came to fruition

Igor Dmitrowsky, a Latvian immigrant, launched the start-up after selling his dairy distribution company. At the time he had plans to eventually add further routes to Belarus, Estonia, Ukraine and Georgia from John F Kennedy International Airport. But it was not to be.

While it was granted permission to fly to St Petersburg and Riga by the US Department of Transportation in 1991, it has been unable to gain certification from the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), the US air regulator. Over almost three decades, the airline failed the FAA's evaluation a whopping seven times, according to Michigan Radio, due to problems with the evacuation slides.

Moving its operations to Michigan did not help, and the Department of Transportation revoked its route authority in 1998. Its fleet, meanwhile, is hardly one to inspire confidence. From 1998, it consisted of a ex Cathay Pacific Boeing 747-200; in 2009 it bought a former Pakistan International Airlines Boeing 747 (minus engines), which was later scrapped; and in 2011 a former Northwest Airlines Boeing 747 was purchased and painted in Baltia's livery.

All to no avail. In March last year, the airline announced that it would be abandoning its now 37-year-old 747, which flew just once, in 2015, from Willow Run Airport, in Ypsilanti, to a maintenance facility in Oscoda, Michigan.

The airline’s next move, in 2016, was to try and lease a newer, more fuel-efficient aircraft in a bid to finally win a certificate to operate.

The company said at the time that it hoped the newer aircraft would “lead to the issuance of an operating certificate in the shortest amount of time.”

Baltia signed a letter of intent to lease a 767-300 plane, according to the blog OneMileAtATime. But now the airline has decided to wipe the slate clean and start all over again.

Could USGlobal become an unlikely rival to Norwegian? Credit: © 2014 Bloomberg Finance LP./Bloomberg

Reports claim that, after significant corporate and operational changes, this time there is more experienced management behind the company – and Wall Street backing.

“Our new airline is well advanced in the process of restructuring, reorganizing and refinancing,” said Anthony Koulouris, USGlobal Airways’ chairman, president and CEO, in a statement to Insider Travel Report. “[We hope] to receive US government regulatory approval and certification in the not too distant future in order to serve international routes to and from Stewart that are currently poorly served or underserved.”

The carrier has high hopes of becoming America's “premier international and customer-centric carrier”, according to its website.

As the company is (still) waiting for certification as an air carrier from the FAA, it cannot sell any tickets but its website states that it is hoping to serve global markets between the US and cities that participate in the US-EU Open Skies Agreement. All of which sounds a bit like... Norwegian, the fast-growing budget airline, which also launched flights from Stewart airport to Europe this June. Let’s hope USGlobal can cope with the competition.