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This article is about the US airline. See Comair (South Africa) for the South African operator.

Comair is a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines based in Erlanger, Kentucky, USA, a city near the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport, which serves Cincinnati, Ohio. Comair is one of the world's largest regional airlines, operating under the name Delta Connection to a large number of destinations in the USA, Canada and the Bahamas.

It also operates some flights from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia. Recently Comair opened bases in Greensboro North Carolina, New York JFK and reopened its base in Orlando Florida.

History

The airline was established in March 1977 and started operations in 1978. It was founded by David Mueller and his father Raymond in Cincinnati and began scheduled services with three 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 22 October 1999 at a cost of over 2 billion dollars.

On March 26, 2001, Comair's pilots went on strike. The strike cancelled the airlines flights and grounded its fleet. The strike ended after a settlement was reached 89 days later.

Comair came to nationwide attention in the United States during Christmas 2004 when it cancelled 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 for this was the computer system that handled flight crew assignments had a hard coded limit of changes for a month. This was reached during December 2004 due to weather in the Cincinnati area. Since the computer meltdown Comair has gone from operating last in the industry, to first in the industry, in terms of customer satisfaction and reliability.

On September 14, 2005, Comair's parent company Delta Air Lines, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, forcing Comair into bankruptcy along with it.

On October 13, 2005, Comair announced that would cut costs by $70 million dollars annually. These savings are to be achieved by aircraft, flight, and employee reductions.

Destinations

Comair operates to the following destinations (as of January 2005):

Fleet

The following aircraft are operated by Comair as of September 30, 2005.

Type Fleet Seats Aircraft Information
Canadair CRJ-100/200 100 40 or 50 seats
Canadair CRJ-700ER 23 70

Incidents and Accidents

On January 9, 1997, Comair Flight 3272 operated by an Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia aircraft, crashed while on approach to Detroit. There were 29 fatalities.

A Canadair CRJ-200 en route Baton Rouge-Washington's Reagan National (Flight DL5364) was forced to make an emergency landing at McGhee's Tyson after a warning light indicated a possible fire in the cargo compartment. The aircraft landed safely around 12pm.

External links

Airlines of the United States | Companies based in Kentucky

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Comair".

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