 In the mid and late 1970s Air Illinois operated 44-passenger seat Hawker Siddeley HS 748 turboprops into Meigs.The HS 748 was the largest aircraft to use Meigs on a regular basis for scheduled passenger airline operations.Ozark Air Lines, a large local service airline in the midwest that primarily operated McDonnell Douglas DC-9 jets and Fairchild Hiller FH-227B propjets at the time, served the airport during the early 1970s with DHC-6 Twin Otter turboprops with up to eight round trip nonstop flights a day between Meigs and the Illinois state capital in Springfield.