Dozens of regional jets that have been sitting in the Arizona desert are returning to commercial service as regional carriers take advantage of a temporary reprieve in pilot attrition.
A pause in the post-pandemic hiring spree by major US airlines – driven mostly by a large aircraft shortage – is providing an opportunity for regional carriers to reactivate long-parked aircraft, Faye Malarkey-Black, chief executive of industry advocacy group the Regional Airline Association, said during the RAA’s Leaders Conference in Washington, DC on 24 September.
“We’ve spent much of the past decade talking about the pilot shortage that has profoundly impacted our industry and our business,” she says. “We’re also facing down a shortage of maintenance technicians, and as we recover, we’re going to need those technicians to bring parked aircraft out of the desert.”
Delta Air Lines subsidiary Endeavor Air, for example, plans to return to service about eight regional jets that have been grounded in Arizona.
Chief executive Jim Graham told RAA conference attendees that the MHIRJ CRJ-family jets will soon rejoin Endeavor’s Delta Connection-branded fleet.
“We still have a few to reactivate,” he says. “We think that will be accomplished by summertime of 2025. Of course, we’re rebuilding our staff and trying to get back up to full strength there, as well.”
Minneapolis-based Endeavor has a total of 141 aircraft in its fleet of CRJ700s and CRJ900s, with 122 of those operational, according to Graham. Eleven of the jets are undergoing heavy maintenance, and a further eight will be revived from the desert by June.
“That would get us back to a full complement at Delta Connection of 325 dual-class airplanes,” he told FlightGlobal. Fellow regional carriers Republic Airways and SkyWest Airlines also operate regional jets under the Delta Connection brand.
Endeavor is not alone in reactivating regional jets, with several regional carriers seeking to return long-parked aircraft into service.
Cirium fleets data reveal that more than 300 jets are listed as “in storage” for 11 regional carriers based in the USA – Skywest Airlines, Air Wisconsin, Endeavor Air, Envoy Air, PSA Airlines, Piedmont Airlines, Mesa Airlines, Horizon Air, GoJet Airlines, Republic Airways and CommuteAir.
That is a marked improvement from April 2023, when nearly 500 jets were grounded.
As of October 2023, Ohio-based PSA Airlines had 15 aircraft parked and waiting to fly for lack of pilots, as it suffered heavy attrition to mainline partner American Airlines and other major US carriers.
Now, it has seven CRJ700s parked, according to Cirium.
Many of the jets that remain in storage are CRJ-series aircraft, though several Embraer-manufactured regional jets and De Havilland Canada Dash 8 turboprops are also listed as “in storage”.
Kingman, Arizona has become “either a temporary or permanent graveyard” for many of the aircraft, Graham tells FlightGlobal.
Ohio-based CommuteAir, which operates a fleet of Embraer ERJ-145s on behalf of United Airlines, plans to reintroduce four jets that have been parked in Kingman by the beginning of next year, Rick Hoelfing, CommuteAir’s CEO, tells FlightGlobal.
“United’s plan is to get about 57 aircraft in service, and we’re going to kind of hold there for the time being,” he says. ”The four [ERJ-145s] gets us to 57 aircraft – that’s the right number for [United], and that is in our initial plans for 2025.”
Those regional jets are currently undergoing inspections before returning to service, Hoefling says, adding that United intends to operate the ERJ-145s at least “for the next several years”.
The pause in pilot-hiring at major carriers provides enough personnel for regional carriers to add aircraft.
“We’ve been lucky enough to see a reprieve in the [pilot] attrition,” Graham says. ”At Endeavor, we flow 20 pilots a month to Delta, if Delta is hiring that month. That is part of our agreement. But that slows down our opportunity to get back to full strength.”
In a typical month, even more pilots are poached from Endeavor by United Airlines, Graham says. ”They love to come in a take captains and first officers,” he says. “United essentially shut down their hiring in May and June, then kicked it back on in July. But we really haven’t seen much attrition at all to United, even once they started [hiring again].”
Relief from heavy pilot attrition is generally thought to be a temporary phenomenon, as many US major and low-cost carriers are overhauling their networks and capacity strategies.
“I do believe that the attrition slowdown is not permanent,” Bryan Bedford, CEO of Indianapolis-headquartered Republic Airways, told conference attendees. ”We will see a return to higher levels of attrition, whether that’s in summer 2025 or by the end of 2025, it’s certainly going to happen.
”The pressure on workforce development, while it is eased today, is not eliminated,” he adds. “It has abated temporarily.”
Graham says Endeavor’s strategy is to plan for the worst – losing high numbers of pilots on a monthly basis. “If that doesn’t happen, we can get better faster, so we can actually put our airplanes back into production earlier.”
