Anybody watch 2/9/10 Frontline episode? It went into quite a bit of detail about regional airlines. Scary, scary stuff.

Here is the link - I'm terrified to get on a regional plane.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/flyingcheap/

Yes, I agree. It was depressing to watch. For one thing, I would not let my family members fly Colgan, that's for sure.

Thanks rkkwan - I think........

I watched it- scary indeed. Thanks to this expose', I'll be paying a lot more attention to whether my airline uses a regional carrier on any future bookings.

75% of the flights out of my home airport are regional flights. I will be flying 2 regional flights soon. I kept asking DH why we were watching the show, but we could not turn away. Neither of our regional flights are with Colgan.

I want to tell these pilots that if they need a place to sleep, they can come to my house anytime!

I cannot believe that the main airlines can put their names on the planes, collect the money for the flights, but have no liability.

I'm stressing over this, so thanks for listening.

My husband has taught at a flight school whose graduates tend to go to work for a regional airline. The story was pretty accurate.

Most people getting a pilot's license just love to fly and will work for little money, building up their hours to move up to a major carrier. They may also have student loan debt to pay off. Because most everyone moves up to bigger airplanes and higher pay as soon as they can, the most inexperienced pilots continue to be hired by the regional carriers.

The other accurate description is that the prop planes fly below/in the weather rather than up on top like the jets on the longer flights. That type of flying is actually more difficult and dangerous.

We have avoided the regional carriers as much as possible even knowing that he trained some of the pilots. Training is one thing, but experience is another.

I survived three regional flights!! Yea. The last one was out of Chicago, and it was a bit dicey there last night. A woman was hoping they did not cancel the flight. I assured her that these regional flights - don't cancel. Move that rig!! They almost did cancel though. Heavy snow started to fall, but two de-icings and three hours later off we went, albeit without my skis.

During snow storms or other weather issues, airlines almost always cancel the regional feeders from their hubs first, as they simply hold fewer passengers. They want to use the available takeoff/landing capacity for the international and mainline flights, as that will affect the least number of passengers.

I saw a lot of small planes Wed night. They all flew. It was well after 11:00pm that the planes left. Like you say, the big planes are the priority. I think they get all of the big traffic out of the way, then they let the little guys fly. Our plane finally took off at 1:15am Chicago time. We were due to leave at 9:10. Whatever, de-ice that plane as often as you want.