Regional airlines generally operate best on the low-cost model and have to struggle relentlessly to keep the expenses down. Still, in many parts of the world, regional services may not be commercially viable. But there is simply no alternative to regional aviation in taking aviation services to remote and isolated communities.

Over the last few decades, regional aviation has become a vital segment of the airline industry in many parts of the world. Take the example of United States, the trailblazer of regional operations. According to the US Regional Airline Association, more than 13,000 regional flights operate every day constituting 52 per cent of the nation’s commercial schedule. About 40 per cent of the US passenger fleet is made up of regional jets and turboprops totalling over 2,700 aircraft. Most notably, regional carriers serve 631 communities across the country and in 75 per cent of such cases; they provide the only scheduled service.

Although regional aviation takes various forms, that’s the crux of the concept. Across the globe, if not for regional airlines, scores of towns and small cities would be bereft of an air link because the mainstream carriers do not consider them commercially viable. Sometimes regional airlines, with their smaller aircraft, are the only ones that can provide air services to places with short runways, because regular narrow-body jets cannot operate from there.

How It All Began

In the early days of commercial aviation, airline fleets consisted mainly of short range propeller-driven aircraft. Many small airlines were set up to link their home base with the closest cities and towns, often not more than a couple of hundred kilometres away. In a sense, most airlines were regionals. However, in the late 1930s, when long-range aircraft with increased capacity began to be produced in large numbers, airlines like the British Overseas Airways Corporation and Trans-Canada Airlines were formed to exploit their potential. Many older airlines like KLM (founded 1919) and Pan Am (founded 1927) also switched to bigger planes. They did not wish to expend their energies on small cities, preferring instead to operate on the major long-distance routes. A natural market thus developed for the pygmy airlines—they could use their small, slow, older planes (eventually called regional aircraft) to collect passengers from communities without sufficient demand to attract mainline service. They would ferry them to the nearest major airport, from where the giant carriers could take them onwards to their desired destination. In this respect, they functioned as feeder airlines. But it was a dog-eat-dog world and many of these small regional airlines were soon acquired by the larger flag carriers to function as captive sources of generating passengers.

Some commuter airlines also developed. These were regionals operating under their own brand providing independent services to off-the-beaten-track communities, for whom the airline was the only viable link to a larger town. Delta Airlines claims credit for pioneering the now ubiquitous hub-and-spoke system in the US, starting with its hub at Atlanta, Georgia.

To keep their enterprise economical, regional airlines were often reluctant to spend large sums on new planes. Instead they opted for cheap war-surplus aircraft like the Douglas DC-3. Another favourite source was the rejects or hand-medowns from the major carriers. This practice of using older planes continued with designs like the Convair 440, Douglas DC-6 and Vickers Viscount. But from the 1960s, regionals began operating aircraft specially tailored to their needs, like the Fokker F27 Friendship and BAC One-Eleven. This extended the range of regional aircraft dramatically, resulting in some not-so-friendly competition with the major airlines and ultimately triggering another wave of consolidation.

Deregulation and After

Although the US likes to project itself as a champion of the free market, for much of the 20th century its airline industry was heavily regulated by the government through the Civil Aeronautics Board. Then in 1978 the Airline Deregulation Act removed most controls and ushered in a new era of air travel. Many airlines, now free to choose their routes, abandoned the less profitable ones serving smaller communities. This encouraged numerous start-up airlines to enter the market, some prudently entering cooperative agreements with the large airlines to form hub-and-spoke networks. The trend came to a head around 1985, when the current business model emerged with a slew of regionals entering code-sharing agreements with major airline partners. The big airlines assumed most of the risk while providing nearly double-digit margins to regional airlines. Both benefitted by increased growth. Some regionals, however, preferred to operate as independent pointto-point carriers in order to avoid having to kowtow to the demands of the major airlines.