US: Regional airlines, more communities threatened as partners shift flying to mainline

For years, regional airlines, which now provide as much a 50% of departures for United, Delta, American and Alaska, now face new hurdles, which will finally force industry consolidation and failures as legacy partners shift flying back to their own mainline services. While this will have a huge negative impact on regional airlines, it will also mean that more communities will be abandoned, with bleak implications for smaller airports. Cowen and Company MD Helane Becker sees the importance of feeding passengers from outlying spoke communities to majors at the hub via regionals declining turning the entire reason for code-sharing with regionals back in the 1980s on its head. At that time, legacies wanted to capture the feed from surrounding communities to keep it out of rival aircraft. <br/>