Many, many former students of mine are now both regional and mainline pilots. (I've been around for a while.) To a man (and a woman), the mainline pilots all tell me that the only difference between regional operations and mainline operations is the compensation and the general QOL/ morale.

I also fail to see the difference between a CRJ-900 operating SFO-ORD nonstop, vs. a 132-seat mainline A318 flying the same exact route. (Aside from the Airbus's larger passenger capacity.) You're flying the same altitudes, same airspeeds, dealing with the same weather conditions, and operating under the same regulations. Perhaps you could enlighten us as to the dramatic difference that supposedly requires all mainline pilots to be Chuck Yeager, while the regional guys are happy just to find the airport.

And if your assertion were true, it would follow that the rate of accidents, incidents, and stupid pilot tricks worthy of CNN coverage would be far higher for regionals than for mainline aircraft. Do you have the data to back up your claim? If so, I'm sure we'd all be interested to see it. A check of airline accident records in the US, over the past ten years, reveals the following accidents that took place in US airspace by US-operated carriers. (It does not include incidents that resulted in no injuries, such as the NWA crew that overflew their destination airport by 150nm a few years back. It also does not include incidents that were clearly due to mechanical failure and were no fault of the crew.)

Regional: Colgan 3407, Comair 5191, and Pinnacle 3701.

Mainline: SWA 1248, SWA 345, UPS 1354, AA 331, CAL 1404.

Obviously this isn't a scientific list, and it only goes back ten years from today. But with regional airlines operating something like 50% of all 121 departures (again, not a precise figure), one would expect to find far more regional airline incidents than mainline. This does not appear to be the case.

Always willing to be educated and told that I'm wrong...however, I'd like to see the data.