This new prospect in 1943 that a transatlantic route through the Azores would soon be possible brought the expensive and unlucky CRIMSON ROUTE project to an early end. On the recommendation of ATC, the Army Air Force in the spring of 1944 abandoned the airfields at The Pas, Churchill and Southampton Island while those at the CRYSTALS and Mingan were reduced to emergency status. Save for five RAF planes which followed the CRIMSON routes to the United Kingdom in the summer of 1943, virtually no other use was of the route by either ferried or transport United States aircraft.