Regional Airline

Regional Airline

Regional airlines are airlines that operate regional aircraft to provide passenger air service to communities without sufficient demand to attract mainline service. There are three ways for a regional airline to do business:

1. As a feeder airline, contracting with a major airline, operating under their brand name, filling two roles:
   1. Deliver passengers to the major airline’s hubs from surrounding communities (this is known as regional feed or regional traffic), and
   2. Increase frequency of service in mainline markets during times of day/days of week when demand does not warrant use of large aircraft.
2. Operating under their own brand, providing service to small and isolated communities, for whom the airline is the only reasonable link to a larger town. An example of this is Peninsula Airways, which links the remote Aleutian Islands of Alaska to Anchorage. In this role, the term commuter airline is generally used.
3. As an independent airline larger than an air taxi or commuter airline service, that operates scheduled point-to-point transit service under its own brand, that does not meet the descriptions above or fly larger "mainline sized" (over 100 seats) aircraft". Mokulele Airlines and the independently branded Expressjet Airlines operations to larger and medium size cities, would be examples of this type of operation in the U.S.