Region Airline Growth

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airlines. The effort of this paper is to provide the evidence that has allowed regional airlines to sustain this growth and compete competitively with the major airlines despite having the disadvantages of scale, market share and capital.

INDUSTRY GROWTH STATISTICS
The U.S. regional airline industry continued its impressive record of growth in 2001. According to the comprehensive industry survey conducted by the Regional Airline Association (RAA), 78.1 million passengers boarded airplanes operated by regional airlines in 2001, representing an increase of 10 percent over the previous year. The average industry load factor was 58.18 percent, up from 57.36 percent in 2000.
Revenue passenger miles (RPMs) increased by 19 percent, reaching 20.81 billion revenue passenger miles. In total, regional carriers serve 94 percent of all of the airports receiving commercial airline service in North America. Industry departures increased slightly in 2001, to 4.38 million. AThe strong growth in 2001 and the 27 percent increase in U.S. regional passenger enplanements during the past four years are evidence that regional airlines are delivering the reliability, convenience and safety expected by the traveling public," said RAA President Debby McElroy (http://www.raa.org/). U.S. regional airlines operate 2,187 aircraft, an increase of 2 percent from the 2000 fleet. The Bombardier Regional Jet accounted for the most regional lift capacity with 14.12 percent and 184 airplanes in service, followed by the Saab 340 (14.07 percent/273 airplanes), Bombardier Dash 8 (9.71 percent/171 airplanes) and EMBRAER ERJ145 (9.36 percent/122 airplanes). Regional jets provided 31 percent of all regional lift, measured by the number of passenger seats, at the end of 2001. The average seating capacity, per airplane, was 29.8 seats. Fleet flying hours totaled 5.06 million for the regional airline industry in 2001, with the annual utilization per aircraft increasing by 7...