Comair (United States)

This article is about the airline based in the United States. For the airline based in South Africa, see Comair (South Africa).

Not to be confused with Con Air.

Comair

File:Comair Logo.svg
IATA ICAO Callsign OH COM COMAIR
Founded	1977
Frequent-flyer program	SkyMiles
Alliance	SkyTeam
Fleet size	74
Destinations	70
Parent company	Delta Air Lines, Inc.
Headquarters	Boone Co, KY, U.S.
Key people	Ryan Gumm (President)
Website	Comair.com

Former Comair logo

Comair is a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines headquartered on the grounds of Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport in unincorporated Boone County, Kentucky, United States, west of Erlanger, and south of Cincinnati, Ohio. Operating under the brand name Delta Connection, Comair operates passenger services to a large number of destinations in the USA, Canada, Mexico and the Bahamas.

History

The airline was established in March 1977 and started operations in April 1977. It was founded by Patrick J. Sowers, Robert T. Tranter, David Mueller and his father Raymond in Cincinnati and began scheduled services with two Piper Navajo aircraft. Under its parent Comair Holdings, it became a public company in July 1981 to support the growth and capital requirements to upgrade their fleet. It became a Delta Connection carrier in 1984. In July 1986 Delta Air Lines acquired 20% of Comair stock. Delta Air Lines acquired full ownership on October 22, 1999 at a cost of over 2 billion dollars.

Comair CRJ-100ER with new livery at Boston Logan International Airport

Comair CRJ-700 at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport

On March 26, 2001, Comair's pilots went on strike. The strike cancelled the airline's flights and grounded its fleet. The strike ended after a new contract was agreed to 89 days later. Comair came to nationwide attention in the United States during Christmas 2004 when it canceled all of its 1,160 flights for Saturday December 25 and Sunday December 26, stranding 30,000 people, many of them never reaching their destination for the holidays. The reason was a twofold combination of record snow and crew scheduling software flaw. On December 23 and 24, a record snowfall hit the Cincinnati area, forcing the airline to deplete its entire supply of deicing solution. With the area highways closed due to the blizzard, no additional deicing fluid could be delivered to the airport, and Comair was forced to cancel all flights beginning on Friday December 24. After receiving necessary supplies overnight, the airline began the process of startup when the computer system that handled flight crew assignments shut down. It had been designed with a hard coded limit of changes for a month, which were far exceeded due to the poor weather in the prior days. The software, ironically, had been in the process of being phased out at the airline in favor of a new system with more capabilities. However, as of May 2008 the original scheduling software has not been replaced. Comair's parent company Delta Air Lines, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 14, 2005, forcing Comair into bankruptcy along with it. Comair announced that would cut costs by million annually. These savings were achieved by aircraft, flight, and employee reductions.

In late 2006, Comair opened an additional crew base and hub city at New York's JFK Airport. Comair had the lowest percentage of on time flights of all major U.S. carriers during late 2006. This was the result of starting operations at JFK, congested airport with poor staffing and a poor terminal and aircraft ramp layout that severely dropped Comair's ratings in the DOT listings. In 2008, Comair tied with American for the lowest on-time performance, with 70% of its flights arriving on-time. During the course of 2007, Comair closed down its crew bases in Greensboro, North Carolina and Orlando, Florida (for the 2nd time). On May 25, 2007, Delta announced that Comair would operate 14 CRJ-900 aircraft for the Delta Connection program. These aircraft will replace 14 CRJ-100 aircraft currently in Comair's fleet. Parent company Delta Air Lines replaced Comair's service in these destinations with Atlantic Southeast Airlines, a subsidiary of SkyWest, Inc., and Chautauqua Airlines, a subsidiary of Republic Airways Holdings. In early 2008, Delta announced it was going to reduce its domestic capacity by 4-5%, in which Comair will reduce its 50-seat Canadair Regional Jet fleet by 8-14 aircraft. In March 2008, when oil reached over per barrel (see Oil price increases since 2003), Delta announced it would further reduce domestic capacity.

On February 10, 2009, Delta Connection announced that ground handling and gate service positions for Comair, Mesaba, and Compass Airlines would be transitioned to a new Delta Airlines subsidiary. The current name of the new company is Regional Handling Services until a new name is confirmed between now and September. Each airline will still have individual flying operations. Everything from ticketing to baggage handling will now be handled by RHS beginning in the 3rd Quarter of 2009. There will be a reduction in the workforce. The largest cut will come from Comair which will reduce its staffing by nearly half. A voluntary program is in place and involuntary cuts may come along later in the year as Delta mainline ground employees, take over positions of Delta subsidiary ground employees formerly contracted to Comair and then Regional Elite Airline Services.

On September 1, 2010 Comair announced that they would reduce their fleet by eliminating all of their aging Bombardier CRJ100/200 aircraft and expect to have them all retired sometime in 2012. Retirement will start in 2011. Also they expect to operate a 44 aircraft fleet and they will also reduce their workforce. Layoffs can begin as early as September 2010, specifically furloughing the pilot group to around 500 pilots, or down to a 1999 date of hire. Their fleet will consist of only CRJ700 and CRJ900 aircraft. [1]

Destinations

Main article: Delta Connection destinations § Operated by Comair

Fleet

Comair CRJ-100ER

As of November 2011, the Comair fleet consists of the following aircraft with an average age of 11.1 years, which are all operated as Delta Connection:

Comair fleet

Aircraft	In Service	Passengers			Notes
		F	Y	Total
Bombardier CRJ100ER	40	0	50	50	To be reduced to 16 in 2012
Bombardier CRJ700ER	15	9	56	65
Bombardier CRJ900ER	13	12	64	76
Total	68

Headquarters

Comair is headquartered in the Comair General Office Building, on the grounds of Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport in unincorporated Boone County, Kentucky, United States, west of Erlanger, and south of Cincinnati, Ohio. Other crew hubs are located in Detroit, MI.

Incidents and accidents

• On October 8, 1979, Comair Flight 444, a Piper PA-31 Navajo light aircraft, crashed shortly after takeoff from Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport. All eight people aboard were killed. The NTSB determined the probable cause of the accident was a partial loss of power immediately after liftoff. The pilot failed to take immediate corrective action, either rejecting the takeoff or raising landing gear and flaps. Contributing factors were the pilot's inexperience with multi-engine aircraft, a hurried departure, inadequate training, inexperienced company management, ineffective FAA certification and surveillance of the operator.
• On January 9, 1997, Comair Flight 3272 operating an Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia aircraft, crashed while on approach into Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. All 29 aboard were killed.
• On March 19, 2001, Comair Flight 5054 operating an Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia aircraft, experienced an in air incident while in transit from Nassau International Airport to Orlando International Airport. The flight diverted to West Palm Beach Airport for an emergency landing. All 27 aboard survived.
• On August 27, 2006, Comair Flight 5191 operating a Bombardier CRJ-100ER aircraft, crashed while taking off from Lexington's Blue Grass Airport. 49 of the 50 on board, including all 47 passengers, were killed.

External links

• Comair
• Delta Air Lines