It is always sad when we lose another airline. Delta will shut down its subsidiary Comair as of September 30th. The writing has been on the wall for a long while. Comair primarily operates 50-seat regional jets, an aircraft type that many carriers are scaling down. Comair was founded in 1977. It became…
We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the issues of regional jets. Recently, we pointed out how the Colgan Crash last year had brought to light several issues with the system of regional carriers. The Regional Airline system is based on the idea that a major carrier, let’s say Continental, can subcontract out its work to a regional carrier, like Colgan Air. The plane is painted in Continental colors, in little tiny letters by the door it says, “operated by Colgan Air.” It used to be, without such airlines and their smaller planes, airlines would never serve certain routes, especially into smaller cities.
Like ExpressJet a few years ago, Skywest is experimenting with flying under its own brand. But not to the same degree. Skywest has contracted with AirTran. AirTran will handle the sales and get a share of the profit, and Skywest will assume the risk.