Defining the Regional Carrier

August 7, 2016

In this series of posts we’re looking at the all the different types of passenger airlines that operate in the world, and narrowing that list down to the most basic types. After doing some research and analysis, we have determined that there are six fundamental airline types. In this post we look at the definition of the Regional Carrier.

Introduction: Defining the Six Fundamental Types of Airlines

Type 1. The Legacy Carrier
Type 2. The Regional Carrier
Type 3. The Low Cost Carrier (LLC)
Type 4. The New Era Carrier (NEC)
Type 5. The World Carrier
Type 6. The All Business Class Airline (ABC)

Additional Notes on the six fundamental airline types.

Tradewind Aviation out of the Northeast

The vast majority of airlines are regional in nature. That doesn’t mean they carry the greatest number of passengers during a year (that would go to the legacy carriers) but there are just a lot of them. Most legacy airlines started out as regionals early in their market evolution. Even Southwest Airlines the behemoth low cost carrier started out as a Texas state regional carrier in the late 1960’s.

Horizon Airlines was a regional airline acquired by Alaska Airlines, another regional in 1986

Todays regional carriers come in many different strips and colors. Many have developed a niche serving a small geographic area with some advantage to operate. A few of them have grown very large, and are some of the world largest airlines. Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines would be examples of this. These 2 cases are extreme, and in my opinion with the future acquisition of Virgin America, Alaska Airlines is looking to become a large modern legacy. And so, for the purposes of our model, a regional carrier can also be from the legacy carrier age, but is not a modern legacy carrier.

There are regional carriers in almost every country of size, and every geographic region on the planet. They fill in and support the transportation network of the larger operations, and many outpost communities rely on their service for access to the outside world.

Alaska Airlines, biggest of the regionals is on the way to a big modern legacy

The Regional Airline

The regional carrier is an airline that serves a specific area or region of a country or globe. Many regional airlines operate as extensions of one of the 3 large legacy carriers – and for the purpose of this article we will view those as part of the legacy they serve. For the rest of the regionals there is a large variety of this animal, but the basic definition includes the following.

Airlines that fly to a particular area of the world. Sometimes that area can be very small or a bit larger, but usually doesn’t include much international traffic (unless to a close neighboring county). It usually never includes transoceanic routes.
Regional’s by our definition can have different inceptions dates, some being as old as legacy airlines with other being new startups.
Regionals come in all sizes including small, medium and large. Usually they are smaller airlines with some notable exceptions.
Service is mostly coach, but can include some limited first or business class cabins.
Most regionals don’t belong to one of the 3 alliances, but instead operate independent agreements or arrangements with other carriers.
Ground services can range greatly from bare bones to fairly extensive. This includes, ticketing, baggage and lounge services.
Regionals usually operate from 1 or 2 main hubs, but can have some point to point routes as well.
Route distances are usually very short, short and medium haul (Hawaiian is a notable exception).
Some of the medium and larger regionals have a frequent flyer program, and most of the smaller operations don’t.
Regional Airlines usually operate only a few, or even one, type of aircraft in their fleet.

Silver Airways route map (Florida and Caribbean regional)

With this definition there are many regional airlines around the globe. In the United States the large regionals are Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, and somewhat smaller Sun Country. Medium would include Silver Airways, Great Lakes Airlines and PenAir. There are many small regionals – Tradewind Aviation out of Nantucket and Seaport Airlines out of Texas are a couple examples.

Seaport Airlines is a small regional out of Houston Texas