Per the McClatchy Washington Bureau, if you ignore all daily outsourced regional flights than SWA is the largest major airline in the US by number of daily mainline flights. More so than American, "Delta and United have a greater share of their total [daily] flights operated by regional partners."
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/...PrcN.La.91.jpg


American
Total Daily Flights: 6,446
Mainline Flights: 3,055 — 47%
Outsourced Flights: 3,391 — 53%

Delta
Total Daily Flights: 4,684
Mainline Flights: 2,149 — 46%
Outsourced Flights: 2,535 — 54%

United
Total Daily Flights: 5,024
Mainline Daily Flights: 1,735 — 35%
Outsourced Daily Flights: 3,289 — 65%

SWA+AT
Total Daily Flights: 3,368
Mainline Flights: 3,368 — 100%
Outsourced Flights: 0



United States Total Daily Flights: 21,913
Mainline American: 3,055 — 13.94%
Mainline Delta: 2,149 — 9.81%
Mainline United: 1,735 — 7.92%
SWA+AT: 3,368 — 15.37%
Mainline Outsourced Regionals: 9,215 — 42%
Others: 2,391 — 10.9%














Moderators—please make this thread a sticky.

 

But how can SWA be making money if they aren't outsourcing everything?! You HAVE to outsource to cheap labor to be competitive right???

 

Wow, that is eye-opening...and incredibly sad.

 

I'm blown away by United.

 

We should really try to promote awareness on this issue.

Unions should be permanently tracking and sharing this information in a more transparent nature.

This will be a permanent subject plaguing our industry and I hope the moderators would make this thread a sticky. Better yet APC.com may benefit from a section of their website that directly tracks outsourced flying.

 

If these numbers surprise you then you are part of the problem.

 

Ding! Ding!

What surprises me is the number of folks who are surprised.

 

Says the RJ pilot.

 

I knew there were lots of RJs but I thought it was delta that had the most RJ flights not United. The number of mainline united flights is shockingly low for its size.

 

Number of flights is an inaccurate way to measure the impact of regional flying on mainline. Regional airlines are operating far far shorter flights than mainline. Delta's CR2 flying out of ATL averages 300nm per departure.

Block hours or available seat miles would be a far more accurate way of measuring the size of the regional sector vs mainline. If anyone has those number please do post.