Future of regionals?
 

https://airwaysmag.com/industry/the-...onal-airlines/

A few opinions...

One excerpt:

They say that, and it's somewhat true. But I doubt people are going to drive 5 hours ALB - NYC and pay the outrageous parking fees.

Maybe, maybe not. The article is long on opinions, but pretty short on actual data.

The issue comes when this thing lasts so long that people's habits permanently change. Plus if the whole AOC green deal anti-airline thing takes hold under Biden, then things could really get bad for us. I may have to go back to hooking.

Foretelling the future has always been like that...

Agreed.

That's a big part of the reason I tend to ignore any and all such things, and try really hard to avoid making predictions myself, unless there is actual data to support such a conclusion.

yet it had some interesting data I had been unaware of:

a loss of 1.28 million (from 5.14 million) departures during a period when air travel was growing is surprising to me. Clearly, some of that may be attributed to larger regional jets, but even so...

That's not a great example because that route is reasonably well served by Amtrak. Look at the huge number of Canadians who cross the border to fly out of Burlington.

This environment is going to lead to ruthless revenue management. Anything that isn't consistently profitable or subsided is going to get cut. 5 flights per day from Des Moines to Chicago on both American and United? Fahget about it.

Less RJ departures, maybe, but I bet RJs flew many more miles. Before Covid, more of my LGA and JFK flights were of the 800-1200 mile variety than the 200-400 mile variety. JFK-DFW, JFK-ORD, LGA-STL, NYC-JAX... these were common 900 routes.

Worst part is the future of years of no
base movements, commuting to reserve, no upgrades, and crappy schedules until some movement returns. With no flying I wonder how long it will take for descent movement to come back. Yes retirements are still happening but airlines are downsizing so the ratio of pilots and flying won’t change much.

I flew on regionals a whole lot back in the 2006-2008 timeframe and I remember it vividly. The airplanes were smaller for sure. For US Airways Express, lots of Dash 8 flying. I remember flying a Saab 340 from Hattiesburg to Memphis. I specifically remember a flight on a Crash 8 from PHL-ISP in 2007 with three passengers. Three. Flying half empty airplanes was common then, and flying standby was an absolute breeze.

Smaller airplanes, half empty flights, etc. Totally different. Comparing departures between now and then is like comparing apples to oranges, IMO.

I agree, the role of the “regional airline“ has changed tremendously trough-out the years, when I was flying the 175 it was all major cities pairings, we were not flying “connecting” flights to the hubs, we were flying the same routes as the 737’s or the 320’s.
The question is if the majors will decide to fly only 737’s or 320’s on those routes and remove the “regionals” from their schedules.
They will do what is financially advantageous to them, whatever that might be.


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When each major is hiring 1000 pilots a year again. I'll leave that up to you to guess when/if that will ever happen again.

The role of network carriers is to aggregate demand. There’s a lot of money in connecting Birmingham and Montgomery to Seattle and Spokane. Regionals aren’t going away