WildBlue025

wrong. In order qualify as a legendary regional, 80% of line pilots must choose to wear the hat and fly no faster than .65 in cruise.

C17B74

Legendary as in the Good, Bad or the Ugly? Legendary meaning simply above the rest and outstanding or a Legendary @ss whooping like most out there. Must be Legendary within the Regional ranks. I would like to say that ACMI has been legendary regarding whipsawing, but that would be untrue as the regionals and others will have a legendary stake in whipsawing. (Personally I keep using that word = “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”) How about we use Classic or something else. Not canceling anything, just having fun.

Swakid8

‘Sadly, but you have a good point lol......

TransWorld

Ozark flew the DC-9 (forerunner of the MD-80) on its famous milk can runs. Memphis to Minneapolis with 5 intermediate stops. They also flew east and west, from the Midwest. To San Diego, New York, Miami, Minneapolis, and Houston. I would not exactly call them a regional in today’s use of the word.

C17B74

5 stops, that sounds horrible. Well my Southwest friends say it makes the day go fast like many other multi-leg flyers - tells me your working when I hear that so it sounds horrible. But then again, 12-15+ hour long haul sounds mind numbing to other folks as well. Can’t blame them, but only slightly working half the time up front and dozing the other half in back works well for myself. Definitely not everyone’s cup of Chai.

sky jet

Probably not in todays use, no. Most of the big ones would have qualified as nationals in those days. The ones I mentioned were truly regional though as the route authorities they originally held from the CAB confined them to specific feeder regions. The next level up were the trunk airlines. Most of those regionals gained size and area by merging with the regional next door. Mohawk/Allegheny being perhaps the poster child in 1970. (we even have a reminder of this long ago deal because of a federal policy named for it) Prior to merging with Mohawk, Allegheny had merged with Lake Central to give it access west of the great lakes and Mohawk gave it the Empire state and Newark. Interestingly, when I started my first "commuter" job in 1989 my airline was flying virtually the same routes and area with SAAB's and 1900's that Mohawk was operating in 1962 with DC-3's, Martin 404's and FH227's when my dad joined as a new mechanic. Our family lived through this evolution as he retired 52 plus years later from American. In the Midwest, South and West there were similar stories throughout the late sixties until deregulation. As a kid my brothers and I would play a game where we tried to name every airline from east to west and north to south along with their fleet types. I guess we were airline geeks. Two of us became pilots. Soon after deregulation a whole new kind of regional emerged. Small airlines based in far flung airports to fly passengers to a hub of larger airlines. With the advent of Allegheny Commuter in Pittsburgh co-branding was born and eventually evolved into what we have today.

Sorry for the thread drift. COVID hotel lockdowns and I'm bored out of my mind.

Lockheed

that was very interesting
thanks for sharing

Flydafe

Not to take away from any other airline out there because all of them have good folks who survived the lost decade. The legendary regional that I flew for was XJT. Good folks and I really liked the training there.

Birdsmash

What made them “legendary”? There are lots of “legendary” airlines in other sectors of the airline world. I’ll point to Southern Air Transport as one.....both for what they did above board and of course what was done under the table. Does a regional RJ operator compare?

notthesame

Does anyone have a current bead on the number of applications being received, and the turnaround from application submission to interview/no interview? I’m assuming the mass rush of mid-2020 has calmed a little since a few months has passed since the Compass/TSA/XJT exodus (and government money furlough recalls).

I’m not out of work — just thinking about broadening long term career goals. I’ve read back about 50 pages in this thread, just looking for most recent info.