Freedom Airlines, Inc. was an American FAA Part 121 certificated air carrier operating under air carrier certificate number FDKA087K issued on April 1, 2002. The Nevada Corporation was headquartered in

Irving, Texas Irving is a city in the U.S. state of Texas. Located in Dallas County, it is also an inner ring suburb of Dallas. The city of Irving is part of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. According to a 2019 estimate from the United States Census Bureau, ...

and a subsidiary of

Mesa Air Group Mesa Air Group, Inc. is a Nevada Corporation commercial aviation holding company with headquarters in Suite 700 at 410 North 44th Street in the Camelback East area of Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona, United States. The company operates one re ...

. It operated flights as Delta Connection for Delta Air Lines serving Delta's hub at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in Hebron, KY, near Cincinnati, OH using EMB 145 aircraft. Freedom's base moved to Cincinnati from New York City in July 2009. Freedom previously operated the CRJ-900 aircraft for Delta Connection as well; however, this contract was canceled and all aircraft were transferred to Eagan, MN-based Mesaba Airlines, Atlanta, GA-based

Atlantic Southeast Airlines Atlantic Southeast Airlines (ASA) was a regional U.S. airline based in the A-Tech Center in College Park, Georgia, flying to 144 destinations as a Delta Connection carrier on behalf of Delta Air Lines via a code sharing agreement and, as of ...

, and

Pinnacle Airlines Endeavor Air is an American regional airline that operates as Delta Connection for Delta Air Lines. The airline was founded as Express Airlines I in 1985 and was renamed Pinnacle Airlines in 2002. In 2012, Pinnacle's parent company filed for Cha ...

. A unrelated commuter airline using the name Freedom Airlines operating independently during the 1980s flying scheduled passenger serice with Convair 580 and Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner turboprops. This earlier version of Freedom Airlines served the eastern U.S. including destinations in Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia including Washington D.C.

History

The airline was established in March 2002 and started operations in October 2002. It was the launch customer for the

Bombardier CRJ-900 The Bombardier CRJ700, CRJ900, and CRJ1000 are a family of regional jet airliners that were designed and manufactured by Canadian transportation conglomerate Bombardier (formerly Canadair) between 1999 and 2020. Their design was derived from ...

. The airline was started so that

could fulfill its contractual obligations to operate the CRJ-900 as

America West Express America West Express was the brand name for America West Airlines commuter and regional flights operated by Mesa Air Group's Mesa Airlines under a code share agreement. Today Mesa Airlines operates for American Eagle. Mesa Airlines operated Ameri ...

for

America West Airlines America West Airlines was a major American airline, founded in 1981, with service commencing in 1983, and having reached US$1 billion in annual revenue in 1989, headquartered in Tempe, Arizona. At the time of its acquisition of US Airways, Americ ...

. Establishing Freedom was necessary as Mesa Airlines was also operating as

US Airways Express US Airways Express was the brand name for the regional affiliate of US Airways, under which a number of individually owned commuter air carriers and regional airlines operate short and medium haul routes. This code sharing service was previously ...

under a

code share In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication c ...

agreement for US Airways. US Airways' collective bargaining agreement with the Air Line Pilots Association prohibited contract carrier code share arrangements with regional jet carriers, if that carrier operated aircraft with more than 70 seats. Mesa Airlines, therefore, could not operate as US Airways Express and operate the CRJ-900. Initially Freedom operated the Bombardier CRJ-700 and CRJ-900 on behalf of America West Airlines. Once US Airways' pilot scope limitation was relaxed, Mesa transferred the operation of all of Freedom's regional jets to Mesa Airlines. Once this transfer was complete Freedom placed 1

Beech 1900D The Beechcraft 1900 is a 19-passenger, pressurized twin-engine turboprop regional airliner manufactured by Beechcraft. It is also used as a freight aircraft and corporate transport, and by several governmental and military organizations. With ...

turboprop on its certificate in order to keep the certificate active. No scheduled flights occurred during this period with the Beech 1900, but it was used as a spare aircraft for Air Midwest aircraft flying out of Phoenix under an America West Express codeshare as well as a spare aircraft for Mesa Airlines' Dash-8-200 aircraft operating under a contract for America West. In October 2005, Freedom Airlines began operations as Delta Connection.

ERJ-145 Contract

On April 7, 2008, Mesa Air Group, the parent company of Freedom Airlines, entered litigation about contractual obligations with Delta Air Lines. Delta attempted to terminate the ERJ-145 contract due to supposed failures to meet completion in 3 of the last 6 months. On May 29, 2008, a federal judge blocked

Delta Delta commonly refers to: * Delta (letter) (Δ or δ), a letter of the Greek alphabet * River delta, at a river mouth * D (NATO phonetic alphabet: "Delta") * Delta Air Lines, US * Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19 Delta may also re ...

from terminating Freedom's regional flying contract which, according to parent company

would have forced it to file for bankruptcy protection by July 20 and cut 700 jobs or 14 percent of its work force. Since then, the ERJ-145 fleet has been reduced to 22 operating aircraft along with 5 spares.

CRJ-900 Contract

In August 2008, Mesa announced that Delta was terminating Freedom's contract to operate CRJ-900 aircraft. As with the ERJ-145 contract, Mesa alleged that the cancellation was driven by Delta's intention to cut capacity rather than Freedom's failure to meet operational performance standards, as Delta claims. However, unlike the ERJ-145 contract, Delta's attempt to cancel the contract was successful. The seven CRJ-900s were returned to Delta with no further financial obligation to Mesa. They were being operated by

until they received the last of their CRJ-900s orders. After that, 5 were operated by Mesaba Airlines. The other 2 were operated by Atlanta-based

Shutdown

In May 2010, a federal judge ruled against regional carrier Mesa Air Group in the long-running dispute with Delta Air Lines over the larger carrier's right to cancel a regional jet service contract. Mesa said in a statement that it may now have to lay off 500 workers at its Freedom Airlines subsidiary because 22 of its regional jets will be without work. On August 31, 2010, the last flight for Freedom Airlines operated.

Fleet at time of closure

The Freedom Airlines fleet at the time it ceased operations consisted of the following aircraft:

Retired fleet

References

External links

Mesa Air Group Website
{{Navboxes , list= {{Mesa Air Group, state=autocollapse {{Airlines of the United States {{Delta Connection Carriers Airlines based in Texas Airlines established in 2002 Airlines disestablished in 2010 Companies based in Irving, Texas Defunct regional airlines of the United States Mesa Air Group Defunct companies based in Texas 2002 establishments in the United States 2010 disestablishments in Texas Defunct airlines of the United States