Originally Posted by
flyjustinfly
Piedmont, SkyWest, Air Wisconsin (ORF for now under AA), Horizon Air all do this. Also, add in local maintenance bases to the mix of desirable reason to have a base outside their Legacy's major hubs
There's a lot more to this question. Consider the maintenance hanger space availability. The AA hub hangar space would be devoted to mainline aircraft (more passenger-miles=higher priority). The same goes for gate space, if we tried to launch all of the regional aircraft and all of mainline from the hubs the already congested airspace would be even more congested. By outbasing the workload is spread to other, less-congested bases.