Central Airlines was a local service carrier, a scheduled passenger airline operating in Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas from 1949 to 1967. It was founded by Keith Kahle in 1944 to operate charter and fixed base services in Oklahoma, but was not granted an air operator's certificate until 1946 and did not begin scheduled flights until September 15, 1949, just before the certificate expired. Central was then headquartered at Meacham Field in Fort Worth, Texas. The airline was eventually acquired by and merged into the original Frontier Airlines which continued and expanded its network.

Frontier Airlines was a local service carrier, a scheduled airline in the United States formed by a merger of Arizona Airways, Challenger Airlines, and Monarch Airlines on June 1, 1950. Headquartered at the now-closed Stapleton International Airport in Denver, Colorado, the airline ceased operations on August 24, 1986. A new airline using the same name was founded eight years later in 1994.