Last reported 2012

Comair

Comair was the Cincinnati regional owned by Delta and flown as Delta Connection. Delta shut it down in 2012, which is where its record here ends.

A passenger jet lifting off a runway into the sunrise — Illustrative photo, not an aircraft of Comair.

2.8 millionpassengers, 2012
60seats per flight on average
472 milesaverage trip per passenger
34.4seat-miles per gallon (estimated)

How it changed

Comair carried 2.8 million passengers in 2012. Its busiest year was 2005, at 13.1 million.

Its average flight had 47 seats in 2000 and 60 in 2012, a sign of larger aircraft replacing smaller ones. The average passenger flew 377 miles per segment in 2000 and 472 in 2012, and 77% of its seat-miles were filled in 2012.

Comair passengers per year, 2000 to 2012.

Who it flew for

Share of Comair seat-miles estimated to belong to each airline, by year. The split comes from the airports it serves, so read it as an estimate. Years with no figures are those where the flying was too small to estimate or the airline sold its own seats.

Estimated partner shares

Year	Delta Air Lines	American Airlines
2012	100.0%
2011	100.0%
2010	100.0%
2009	94.3%	5.7%
2008	100.0%
2007	100.0%
2006	100.0%
2005	100.0%
2004	100.0%
2003	100.0%
2002	100.0%
2001	100.0%
2000	100.0%

Fuel

In 2012 Comair burned 50 million gallons of jet fuel (an estimate, see below), which is 34.4 seat-miles per gallon and about 0.367 kg of CO2 per passenger-mile. Over 500 miles that's roughly 184 kg per passenger. Small regional aircraft burn more fuel per seat than the mainline jets, and a short hop spends a larger share of its fuel on take-off and climb, so these figures aren't graded against the airlines on the main list. Their flying and fuel are counted in the airlines whose names are on the tickets.

For some years Comair didn't file usable fuel figures with BTS. In 1 of them we priced its own flight hours at the fuel burn per hour that other airlines reported for the same aircraft types that year. They're marked with an asterisk in the table below. See the methodology.

Year-by-year figures

Year	Passengers (millions)	Departures (thousands)	Seats per flight	Average trip (miles)	Load factor	Seat-miles (billions)	Seat-miles per gallon
2012	2.8	60	60.3	472	77.1%	1.71	34.4*
2011	5.5	130	56.7	460	73.9%	3.42	39.4
2010	6.5	153	56.0	481	75.6%	4.13	41.2
2009	6.4	156	56.4	502	73.1%	4.37	42.0
2008	8.2	203	55.0	507	74.6%	5.54	41.3
2007	9.4	240	52.7	491	75.2%	6.12	40.8
2006	10.7	285	51.2	495	74.3%	7.11	41.2
2005	13.1	388	51.1	468	68.1%	9.02	39.9
2004	12.7	379	50.7	494	67.8%	9.25	39.6
2003	11.0	341	49.6	477	66.3%	7.89	38.7
2002	8.8	282	48.1	428	66.4%	5.64	41.5
2001	4.8	166	48.5	391	60.7%	3.07	37.7
2000	5.7	178	47.3	377	68.7%	3.13	48.9

Regionals with shared partners

These profiles have a partner airline in common with Comair in at least one data year. The partner split is estimated, and the airlines may have flown for the shared network at different times.

Nearby in fuel efficiency

Neighbours in the seat-miles per gallon table, using each airline's last data year. Fuel estimates are marked on the profiles, and these aren't same-year rankings.

Air Wisconsin31.4 seat-miles per gallon, 2025 Trans States Airlines34.2 seat-miles per gallon, 2020 Chautauqua Airlines34.8 seat-miles per gallon, 2014 CommuteAir38.2 seat-miles per gallon, 2025

Airline references

Wikipedia: Comair

Source: US Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), T-100 traffic and Schedule T-2 fuel filings; US EPA jet-fuel CO2 factor. Methods and allocation limits.

Back to all regional airlines or the fuel rankings.