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Comair was a wholly owned subsidiary airline of Delta Air Lines, headquartered on the grounds of Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport in Boone County, Kentucky, United States, west of Erlanger, and south of Cincinnati. Operating under the brand name Delta Connection, Comair operated passenger services to destinations in the USA, Canada, Mexico and the Bahamas. Comair and Delta Air Lines announced on July 27, 2012 that Comair would cease operations on September 29, 2012. ==History== The airline was established in March 1977, and started operations in April 1977. Patrick J. Sowers, Robert T. Tranter, David Mueller and his father Raymond founded the airline in Cincinnati. It began scheduled services with two Piper Navajo aircraft. Embraer EMB-110 Bandeirante twin-engine turboprop commuter aircraft were added to Comair's fleet in 1982. Under its parent Comair Holdings, it became a public company in July 1981 to support the growth and capital requirements to upgrade its 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. On March 26, 2001, Comair's pilots went on strike. The strike cancelled the airline's flights and grounded its fleet. The strike ended 89 days later when a new contract was agreed to. However, there were seeds sown of a bitter animosity between the Delta pilot group and Comair. During the labor dispute in early 2001, there were some Delta pilots who contributed financially to the strike funds of Comair pilots. Like many legacy carriers, Delta furloughed a number of pilots after the attack of 9/11/2001. While waiting to be recalled, some Delta pilots were able to find work at some of the regionals such as Atlantic Southeast Airlines, who were not hit nearly as hard as the major airlines. However, a furloughed Delta pilot could only be hired at Comair if he/she resigns his/her seniority number with Delta Air Lines and thus, there were very few furloughed Delta pilots who went to Comair. This would intensify a rift between both parties.〔expressjetpilots.com forum 07-19-2012 RUMOR: Comair to cease operations October 1.〕 Comair came to nationwide attention during winter 2004 when it canceled all of its flights on Saturday, December 25 and Sunday, December 26th, stranding 30,000 people. The reason was a combination of record snow and a 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 had been in the process of being phased out at the airline in favor of a new system with more capabilities. Comair's parent company Delta Air Lines filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 14, 2005, bringing Comair into bankruptcy along with it. Comair announced that would cut costs by million dollars annually. These savings were achieved by aircraft, flight, and employee reductions. In late 2006, Comair opened an additional crew base and hub 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, a congested airport with poor staffing and an unfortunate 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. On May 25, 2007, Delta announced that Comair would operate 14 CRJ-900 aircraft for Delta Connection. 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 dollars 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 Airlines, and Compass Airlines would be transitioned to a new Delta Air Lines subsidiary. The interim name of the new company was Regional Handling Services until a new name was confirmed before September. Each airline will still have individual flying operations. Everything from ticketing to baggage handling was to 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, expecting to have retired them all sometime in 2012. Retirement would start in 2011. Also, they expected to operate a fleet of 44 aircraft, and they also planned to reduce their workforce. Layoffs were to begin after September 2010, furloughing the pilot group to around 500 pilots (down to a 1999 date of hire). Their fleet was to consist of only CRJ700 and CRJ900 aircraft. In July 2012, Delta announced that it would be shutting down Comair. The last Comair flight flew from Jacksonville International Airport to Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport on 29 September 2012, ending more than three decades of operation. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Comair」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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