ValuJet Airlines, later known as AirTran Airlines after joining forces with AirTran Airways, was an ultra low-cost U.S. airline, headquartered in unincorporated Clayton County, Georgia, that operated regularly scheduled domestic and international flights in the Eastern United States and Canada during the 1990s. The company was founded in 1992 and was notorious for its sometimes dangerous cost-cutting measures. All of the airline's planes were purchased used from other airlines; very little training was provided to workers; and contractors were used for maintenance and other services. The company quickly developed a reputation for safety issues. In 1995, the military refused ValuJet's bid to fly military personnel over safety worries, and officials at the FAA wanted the airline to be grounded. The crash of Flight 592 in 1996, which was caused by an on-board fire resulting from improperly stored hazardous materials on board, spelled doom for the airline. ValuJet was grounded the next month and not allowed to fly again until September of that same year, with a greatly reduced fleet. The airline's major customers never returned, and the company suffered major losses. In 1997, ValuJet purchased the much smaller AirTran Airways. Although ValuJet was the nominal survivor, executives believed that a new name was important to regain passenger traffic, so the merged company adopted the AirTran name. After the merger, AirTran made little mention of its past as ValuJet. AirTran was purchased by Southwest Airlines in 2011 and ended flights in 2014. History Inception ValuJet was founded in 1992 and began operations on October 26, 1993. It originally offered service from Atlanta to Orlando, Jacksonville, and Tampa with a single McDonnell Douglas DC-9 that previously belonged to Delta Air Lines. The first flight, Flight 901, flew from Atlanta to Tampa. The carrier was headed by a group of industry veterans including co-founder and chairman Robert Priddy, who had started a string of successful airlines including Atlantic Southeast Airlines (ASA), Air Midwest, and Florida Gulf Airlines. Board members Maury Gallagher and Tim Flynn, the other co-founders, developed and ran WestAir before selling it to Mesa Airlines; former Continental Airlines and Flying Tigers President Lewis Jordan joined the carrier a short time later as president. The airline went public in June 1994 after a year of tremendous growth with the addition of 15 aircraft since the first flight in 1993. It became the fastest airline to make a profit in the history of