Meet Lynx

There's a new regional airline on the block - Lynx.

Lynx to begin flying Friday - Denver Post

Lynx is owned by Frontier Airlines, but it's your typical subsidiary owned regional arm - using Frontier Airlines money to buy and fly smaller airplanes and pay non-union pilots less money than their mainline union counterparts.

But that's an old story. Personally I'm not a huge non-union or union guy - but my pilot buds all join the unions and feel pretty strongly about them. If I was an airline pilot, I'd probably be the same way. Anywho, that's not relevant to this blog entry, exactly.

The point is, Lynx is doing something most regional airlines don't do - fly turboprops. The majority of all the regional airlines in the United States have been flying CRJs and ERJs , mainly because most passengers don't like airplanes with big spinning meateaters out there on the wing. It's been like this ever since the 1950s when the turbofan was introduced.

But there are many advantages to flying turboprops - mainly in fuel efficiency, which is pretty much paramount for airlines nowadays. Frontier is flying 74 seat Bombardier Q400s from Denver to four destinations: Wichita, Kansas; Rapid City, SD; Sioux City, Iowa, and Albuquerque, NM.

The flights are all between 300 and 466 miles, which means passengers will have to spend about one to two hours each flight, which are a bit easier to deal with on the Q400 than the CRJ or the ERJ. In fact, other than the slight comfort gain, there won't be much noticeable difference between a jet and a turboprop for passengers sitting on the Q400 (Btw, the "Q" stands for "quiet").

Lynx has had some issues getting certified (just random DOT delays from what I've heard), and they've been flying the routes since October using RJ metal leased from other regional airlines. The loads have apparently been good so far, considering most of these airports (save ABQ) see little in the way of competition from the mainstay airlines (NW at SUX and RAP, for instance). Lynx has already upgraded SUX from two flights a day to three flights, so that's a definite plus.

Not everyone flying from these communities will be using Lynx (except for ABQ, there are virtually no convenient ways to get to any east coast or Midwest city using the airline), but there are a myriad of west coast, mountain and even Caribbean destinations that would be useful using the turboprop to get to Frontier's main operation at DEN. Lynx is good for Frontier and good for passengers (but pilots will say it's bad for them - which it is - further dragging down pilot base pay for new hires).

But we can't have everything.