When business traveler John Jay Schwartz boards an airliner at Richmond International Airport, he wants to know what airline he's flying.
Schwartz flies out of RIC about half a dozen times a month for business and pleasure.
"I have three children in three time zones," the national commercial real estate consultant said, "so I'm sensitive to equipment because of the distances I want to fly."
But when most travelers at Richmond International Airport buy their tickets on major airlines such as Delta Air Lines and US Airways, they are unaware that they're usually flying on regional air carriers flying small jets working under contract for the big-name airlines.
"They're not as comfortable as large airplanes," Schwartz said. "You don't have as much room, but on a short flight you just put up with that."
Because they fly smaller jet aircraft and, not burdened by mainline carriers' costs, can operate them more efficiently, regional airlines provide air travelers at Richmond International more flights to more destinations than would be available if the airport were served only by mainline carriers' large aircraft.
"That means greater flexibility and more options, and more places folks can get to when they don't have enough demand to fill a big jet," said Kim Scheeler, president and CEO of the Greater Richmond Chamber. "I see that as a positive."
In name, nine airlines serve the central Virginia air-travel market at RIC. In reality, 23 airlines, from legacy companies such as Delta and American Airlines to small carriers like Trans States Airlines, GoJet and Chautauqua Airlines, fly out of Richmond.
The regional carriers fly under the name -- called "codesharing" -- and colors of their mainline partners, and the mainline carriers have to indicate flights operated by regionals when passengers book flights.
Two mainline carriers, Continental and Northwest, offer service using regional airlines only, the airport said. Some regionals serving RIC, like Delta's Comair, US Airway's Piedmont and American's American Eagle, are owned by their mainline partners. Other companies, like Air Wisconsin, are independently owned, or part of groups of regional airlines, like Republic Airways.
"Regional carriers are important for markets like Richmond," said Donna Kelliher, Dominion Resources Inc.'s director of travel and corporate services. "They take you places you would not otherwise be able to go, like Houston and Miami."
Richmond has nonstop flights to those major cities thanks to regional airline jet service, said Troy Bell, Richmond International's director of marketing and air-service development. "All of our New York service, with the exception of JetBlue, is on regional jets."
Regionals serve 16 destinations in the U.S. and Canada nonstop from Richmond, Bell said. Major airlines serve only three markets -- Dallas-Fort Worth in Texas and Orlando and Fort Lauderdale in Florida -- exclusively with large jets from RIC.
The advent in the past decade of the state-of-the-art regional jet has changed the regional airline industry. Now 95 percent of the Richmond regional airline flights use jet aircraft.
"As passengers continue to demand low fares, the only way that many of the old-line, legacy carriers can produce these fares is operating flights through their regional partners, operating regional jets of all sizes," said David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association.
"In terms of flight safety, we have had no issues [or] incident patterns specific to regional carriers," Bell said.
In the past decade, the only incident involving an airliner associated with a Richmond flight occurred in 2001, when a Continental Express flight attendant was injured in turbulence as the plane approached to land at Richmond International.
"When you consider how many planes are in the air every day," said frequent flier Schwartz, "you're probably safer in that plane than you are behind many people out there driving a car."
Contact Peter Bacqué at (804) 649-6813 or pbacque@timesdispatch.com.
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