Mesa Airlines operates regional routes for both American and United Airlines. The airline provides services on “feeder” routes from smaller city-centers to both major airline hubs. Due to this, it has become an integral part to both airlines’ hub-and-spoke system of operations. While the airline provides services on the point-to-point routes that feed the major hubs, the airline also operates “operating bases” at those hubs. It focuses on “operating bases” to cut costs in pilot/flight crew training, ground/support personnel and maintenance functions. Thus, the airline can be considered a hybrid airline in that it exhibits characteristics of both point-to-point air services (feeding major hubs) and hub-and-spoke air services (operating …show more content…
Mesa Airlines is responsible for the marketing of personnel. Both aircrew and maintenance employees are very specialized commodities. The airline markets for these personnel through its website Mesa-air.com. (Mesa-air.com, 2016) In terms of scheduling, the airline must ensure that it has adequate crews to fly the aircraft as well as enough maintainers in order to keep the fleet …show more content…
Some of the aircraft are purchased, some leased by Mesa airlines from a supplier, while their major code-share partners provide some to the airlines through an operating lease. Several examples highlighting how Mesa Airlines acquires aircraft are : “Mesa Air Group, Inc. is pleased to announce a new agreement with United Airlines that extends the term of its existing fleet of 20 Bombardier CRJ 700 aircraft to 2019 and adds 30 new United owned Embraer 174 aircraft.” (BusinessWire, 2013), “Mesa Airlines will lease nine Bombardier CRJ900s, which were previously operated by Uruguay’s Pluna, for operations at US Airways (now American Airlines).” (Flightglobal, 2013), and “The regional airline agreed to buy seven CRJ900 NextGen planes from Canadian aerospace and transportation manufacturer, Bombardier Inc.” (PhoenixBusinessJournal, 2015) The airline continually seeks to acquire aircraft in the most cost-effective manner