Rankings / Regional airlines / Freedom Airlines
Last reported 2010Freedom Airlines
Freedom Airlines was a subsidiary of Mesa Air Group, set up in 2002 so that Mesa could fly CRJ-900 jets as America West Express. From October 2005 it flew as Delta Connection from Cincinnati, later with Embraer ERJ-145 jets. After a court ruled in May 2010 that Delta could end its ERJ-145 contract with Mesa, Freedom operated its last flight on 31 August 2010. Its record here runs from 2003 to 2010 and peaks at 2.7 million passengers in 2007.
- 0.8 millionpassengers, 2010
- 50seats per flight on average
- 372 milesaverage trip per passenger
- 40.1seat-miles per gallon (estimated)
How it changed
Freedom Airlines carried 0.8 million passengers in 2010. Its busiest year was 2007, at 2.7 million.
Its average flight had 68 seats in 2003 and 50 in 2010, a sign of smaller aircraft replacing larger ones. The average passenger flew 521 miles per segment in 2003 and 372 in 2010, and 78% of its seat-miles were filled in 2010.
Fuel
In 2010 Freedom Airlines burned 10 million gallons of jet fuel (an estimate, see below), which is 40.1 seat-miles per gallon and about 0.310 kg of CO2 per passenger-mile. Over 500 miles that's roughly 155 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 Freedom Airlines didn't file usable fuel figures with BTS. In 7 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 0.8 | 22 | 50.0 | 372 | 78.4% | 0.40 | 40.1* |
| 2009 | 1.5 | 40 | 50.0 | 374 | 76.4% | 0.73 | 38.2* |
| 2008 | 1.8 | 50 | 54.9 | 405 | 67.5% | 1.09 | 42.4* |
| 2007 | 2.7 | 80 | 48.1 | 388 | 71.7% | 1.44 | 41.7* |
| 2006 | 1.7 | 51 | 48.4 | 460 | 71.6% | 1.09 | 41.2* |
| 2005 | 0.1 | 3 | 49.3 | 640 | 72.0% | 0.08 | 44.0* |
| 2004 | 0.4 | 7 | 78.4 | 658 | 72.5% | 0.38 | 62.6 |
| 2003 | 1.2 | 23 | 67.9 | 521 | 73.6% | 0.83 | 46.8* |
Regionals with shared partners
These profiles have a partner airline in common with Freedom Airlines 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.
Airline references
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.