It operates chartered aircraft for a variety of clients including semi-scheduled services for BLADEone and XO. It’s very challenging for an airline with a cost-structure like SkyWest or any other regional airline built over the last several decades to compete with the cost structure we, as an upstart, have built our business around.”įounded in 2016, Contour Airlines was built from the charter service (Contour Aviation) its parent company established in 1982. Contour customers routinely note the extra breathing room but Chaifetz acknowledges it’s a tough way to do business.Ĭontour Airlines CEO Matt Chaifetz, left, poses for a photo aboard a Contour ERJ-135 at the. It’s a model at odds with a sector in which larger regional jets with 75 or more seats are favored in view of high unit operating costs (fuel, pilot wages, maintenance). Contour configures its airplanes with just 30 seats, making for a roomier cabin but less revenue. The airline also pays at the same scales as its larger regional counterparts.Ĭomplying with charter-type Part 135 regulations requires Contour to actually take seats out of the jets it operates (12 Embraer ERJ-135 and 10 ERJ-140s now being delivered) which usually fly with 40-50 passengers. He adds that in some of the small markets in which Contour operates (Tupelo, MS or Macon, GA), it’s “the only game in town” for pilots who want to live in less dense, slower-paced places. It also helps Chaifetz says that Contour offers its pilots home-basing, paying for their transport to the airline’s operating bases from which they fly. That allows it to hire pilots with lower minimum flight hours experience than Part 121 airlines and to recruit pilots older than 65, the mandatory retirement age for pilots at major carriers.Īs a result, Contour enjoys a highly experienced core of older pilots complimented by those just starting their air transport careers. The Part 135 certificate that it flies under is for “charter-type services”. But Contour has been successful in attracting and keeping pilots Chaifetz says, thanks partly to its status as a Part 135 carrier.Ĭontour does not operate under the FAA Part 121 certificate that regularly scheduled airlines are subject to. A shortage of pilots now seeing both higher wages and increased opportunity to move up from regional carriers to major airlines is acute. Most regionals cite the problem of recruiting and retaining enough pilots as a major factor in their service cuts. The contraction has taken place despite a surge in demand for flights to smaller cities for which some observers credit the remote work revolution accelerated by the Pandemic. regional airline sector which has seen similar carriers like CommutAir and Cape Air chop service to a number of destinations. When it pulled out from dozens of markets earlier this year Utah-based SkyWest cited the broader contraction of the U.S. As an American Airlines interline partner, Contour offers travelers the ability to ticket from their originating airport and through a connecting hub to American destinations. Once up and running the new routes will form part of 26 markets across the country served by Contour, 17 of which are EAS-subsidized.
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