The fatal crash of Comair Flight 3272 Thursday was the Erlanger-based
airline's second in its 19-year history.
The regional carrier, which is a feeder to Delta Air Lines, has been considered one of the safest in the commercial airline industry.
''Delta and Comair are as safe as the hand of man can make them,'' Mike Boyd, president of Aviation Systems Research Inc., said in an interview with The Enquirer in July. Aviation Systems is an industry consulting firm that forecasts and analyzes passenger traffic for airlines.
Delta and Comair combined operate nearly 90 percent of all flights at the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.
Comair's only other fatal crash was in 1979 at the Cincinnati airport. Eight people were killed when an engine failed on takeoff on a Piper Navajo. Investigators never determined the cause of the engine failure.
Since 1992, Comair has followed Federal Aviation Administration rules that cover major airlines, which are more strict for training and maintenance than for other regional airlines that use smaller aircraft.
''Safety always has been and always will be the No. 1 driving force at Comair,'' Charles Curran, senior vice president of marketing for Comair, told reporters Thursday evening.
Behind Comair's overall good safety record is a company that has grown into one of the nation's largest regional carriers since its founding in 1977 by father-and-son team Raymond and David Mueller.
The tiny commuter that started with three Piper Navajo aircraft on flights connecting Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit and Canton-Akron has grown into a major regional carrier serving 79 cities in 26 states and three countries. It has a fleet of 93 aircraft and operates 660 daily flights.
The younger Mr. Mueller, now CEO, flew many of the initial flights. Now the airline has more than 3,000 employees.
Comair's fleet today includes 45 Canadair Regional Jets, 41 Embraer Brasilias and seven Saab SF-340 turboprops. The airline has plans to replace all the turboprops with the Canadair jets. Comair retired three 19-seat Fairchild Metro III turboprop aircraft last month.
The company began using Embraer Brasilia aircraft in December 1988.
Comair, which went public in 1981, started to take off in 1989 after it signed a 10-year marketing agreement with Delta Air Lines. It serves as a Delta Connection carrier, a relationship that has enabled Comair to grow dramatically in the 1990s.
Comair's bread and butter is the business traveler - the most lucrative of all passenger types. Passenger boardings on the airline have likewise soared. Boardings totaled 4.1 million in fiscal 1996 compared with 1.6 million in 1990 and 660,151 in 1987.
Annual revenue has increased 193.8 percent since 1990 to $463.3 million during fiscal 1996, which ended in March. Profit during the same period increased 361.5 percent to $60.0 million.
Comair's impressive growth - a favorite topic among Wall Street analysts and money managers who have watched the company's stock skyrocket in recent years - belies the boom-and-bust nature of the industry.
Comair's revenue has increased an average 32.3 percent a year since 1990, while profits have grown at twice that rate annually. That compares with an industry that is growing revenue about 3 percent a year.
In some ways, Comair has benefited from the industry's problems. Often, when major airlines retrenched and dropped flights to smaller cities, Comair expanded and picked up some of those flights.
It remains to be seen how the stock market or potential passenger will react to the crash. Most airline stocks suffer dramatically after a major crash.
Jane Prendergast contributed to this report.
PLANE
SERVICE RECORD
VICTIMS
WEATHER
COMAIR
CRASH SITE
AIRPORT
INVESTIGATION
