Boston Airport
 

Why is Boston Airport not a popular base for regional airlines? I have checked a bunch of regional airlines and none of them base in Boston. Why is that?

It’s not a hub for any major that uses regional airlines and it’s not cheap enough to be a maintenance base.

Probably too expensive/not enough space to overnight aircraft there in large numbers.

Cape Air.....if that counts hah!

Regionals (in the jet era) base their pilots at mainline hubs, or at certain lower-cost airports which the regionals use as MX bases. A MX base will be a medium-size town with low costs, and enough air traffic to drive a lot of RJ departures.

It’s a hub for AAL...737 pilot base.

It might be a AAL 737 pilot base but it’s not a hub for AAL. From AA’s investor relations website:

“American has hubs in Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Washington, D.C.”

https://americanairlines.gcs-web.com/

Unless you’re Cape Air it’s damn near impossible to overnight a good amount of airplanes there. Having friends at Massport and all over the airlines I can tell you they have a huge daily headache trying to allocate extra gates at the int’l terminal, north cargo, and even on / near 14/32 just for RONs on a normal night. Delta keeps teasing it as a hub, for awhile it was officially, then lost the title, gained it again then lost it. Not sure of the status right now.

Why? One word

Massport



It’s also very space/gate limited.