Regional airline
Categories: Articles to be merged | Airlines
Regional airlines are a type of airline service that is intended to feed a larger airline or larger aircraft. It also describes air service between small communities that are not able to support larger aircraft. This type of service is also called a commuter airline.
Regional airlines vary in ownership from being independent companies to being wholly owned subsidiaries of major carriers. Their aircraft frequently are painted in the same color scheme as the airline whose flights they support but with a sightly different name, like adding express to the major airlies name.
Regional airlines began by operating propeller-driven equipment over short routes, sometimes on flights of less than 100 miles in length. Many of the regional airlines eventually transitioned to jet equipment, providing jet service to small communities by the 1960s and 1970s as the airlines grew in size. This brought the regional airlines into direct competion with the major airlines resulting in many of these regional airlines going out of business.
By the 1990s, regional airlines, at least in the US, were still flying mostly turboprop aircraft. The development of aircraft specifically designed for use as regional jets allowed airlines in this market to upgrade to larger and faster planes that offered a more quiet ride and faster service.
United States regional airlines
In the United States, regional airlines were an important building block of today's passenger air system. The U.S. Government encouraged the forming of regional airlines to provide feeder services from smaller communities to larger towns, where air passengers could connect to the major. The government also encouraged regional airline growth with the goal of making convenient air travel within the geographical reach of every American.
Some examples of the original regional airlines sanctioned by the Civil Aeronautics Board in the 1940s and 1950s include:
- Frontier Airlines
- Allegheny Airlines
- Bonanza Airlines
- Mohawk Airlines
- North Central Airlines
- Piedmont Airlines
- Southern Airways
- West Coast Airlines
Of the airlines listed above, none survives today. Some airlines use these names today; however, they are not the corporate successors to the original airlines.
See also
External links
- Regional Airlines Association (US)
- Regional Airline Partners (US)
- European Regions Airline Association (EU)
- Regional Aviation Association of Australia (Aus)
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