Shuttle America

Shuttle America was a subsidiary of Republic Airways Holdings. It flew under the Delta Connection, United Express and American Eagle brands at different times, and its record here runs to 2016.

A passenger jet at a gate on a clear winter morning — Illustrative photo, not an aircraft of Shuttle America.

4.5 millionpassengers, 2016
67seats per flight on average
565 milesaverage trip per passenger
45.5seat-miles per gallon

How it changed

Shuttle America carried 4.5 million passengers in 2016. Its busiest year was 2015, at 7.8 million.

Its average flight had 34 seats in 2002 and 67 in 2016, a sign of larger aircraft replacing smaller ones. The average passenger flew 191 miles per segment in 2002 and 565 in 2016, and 75% of its seat-miles were filled in 2016.

Shuttle America passengers per year, 2002 to 2016.

Who it flew for

Shuttle America flew for more than one airline, and sometimes several at once. Our estimate of the split between them, which is based on the airports it serves, is too rough to publish for a regional like this. The summary at the top names its partners from public record.

Fuel

In 2016 Shuttle America burned 75 million gallons of jet fuel, which is 45.5 seat-miles per gallon and about 0.286 kg of CO2 per passenger-mile. Over 500 miles that's roughly 143 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 Shuttle America didn't file usable fuel figures with BTS. In 4 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; in 2 we used the median seat-miles per gallon of the regionals that did report. 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
2016	4.5	93	66.9	565	74.7%	3.40	45.5
2015	7.8	161	63.0	554	78.3%	5.54	41.8
2014	5.8	108	71.2	667	77.7%	4.95	45.0
2013	6.1	117	71.2	620	76.0%	4.95	44.6
2012	5.9	117	71.2	619	72.4%	5.01	41.0
2011	5.0	106	71.5	623	68.2%	4.53	49.0
2010	5.0	100	71.7	639	73.5%	4.37	40.4*
2009	5.2	110	71.6	603	70.9%	4.44	44.0*
2008	4.2	83	70.4	654	73.3%	3.74	44.7*
2007	4.0	77	70.0	671	73.6%	3.63	59.0
2006	3.6	72	70.0	702	71.7%	3.57	48.5
2005	1.2	36	50.4	571	67.9%	1.04	51.8
2004	0.5	34	30.2	198	51.0%	0.21	34.1*
2003	0.5	33	31.1	204	45.5%	0.21	33.5*
2002	0.1	8	33.6	191	47.7%	0.05	36.3*

Regionals with shared partners

These profiles have a partner airline in common with Shuttle America 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.

SkyWest Airlines42.8 seat-miles per gallon, 2025 Atlantic Southeast Airlines42.9 seat-miles per gallon, 2011 Executive Airlines46.1 seat-miles per gallon, 2012 Mesa Airlines47.2 seat-miles per gallon, 2025

Airline references

Wikipedia: Shuttle America

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.