Forty-eight hours before the Regional Airline Association staged its annual convention at the Phoenix Civic Center from May 18 to 21, the season’s first 100-degree day marked the start of another long, oppressive summer in the Sonoran desert of the American Southwest. Unfortunately for the RAA and its membership, the business climate for the nation’s regional airlines rarely turns on such regular intervals, leaving the pundits asking the same old question: When will the airline industry begin to see a recovery and what will it mean to the regional sector?
As investor analysts and industry consultants do their level best to offer educated projections, the people most intimately involved in the industry almost uniformly offer little more than a shrug and an expression of hope. What does seem certain, however, is that the regional airlines will play a major role in any recovery, be it next year or half a decade from now.
