On September 28 at 4:04 p.m., Flight 3205 took off from Houston for Cincinnati. On board was 35 years of history, as well as the end of a story. This was the last Comair flight to land in Cincinnati, the same airport that saw the beginnings of Comair in 1977.

Capt. Tim Mullane, who piloted the flight, started with the company in 1978. He retired at age 60, just when the age 65 law went into effect, and then came back to the airline. As the most senior pilot on the property, he was asked to perform the last flight into Cincinnati.

At the gate, fire trucks hosed down the CRJ-700, and pilots and flight attendants were on the tarmac to greet the flight. Inside the airport doors, 250 more Comair employees and Mullane’s family, cheering as each passenger disembarked, waited for the crew to come off a Comair plane for the last time.

Among the crowd was Capt. Erik Jensen, Comair MEC chair. “We weren’t just a company, we were a family,” said Jensen. “We couldn’t let this flight come in without recognizing the 35 years of Comair, and though we were saying our good-byes to our airline, the family that Comair created will continue.”

The actual final revenue flight for Comair took place the following morning and headed to Minneapolis out of Jacksonville, Fla. As of midnight on September 29, Comair ceased to operate and permanently furloughed more than 600 pilots.