Mesa Airlines, Inc. is an American regional airline based in Phoenix, Arizona. It is a FAA Part 121 certificated air carrier operating under air carrier certificate number MASA036A issued on June 29, 1979. It is a subsidiary of Mesa Air Group. It operates flights as American Eagle and United Express. It serves more than 180 markets in the Western Hemisphere. Mesa's safety record was noted as having the fewest incidents among domestic regional airlines in the Journal of Air Transportation. Mesa filed for Chapter 11 in January 2010, hoping to shed financial obligations for leases on airplanes it no longer needed. In March 2011, Mesa emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The time Mesa spent in bankruptcy was one of the shortest time periods in aviation history.

Mesa Airlines operates as:

Mesa began operations as Mesa Air Shuttle in Farmington, New Mexico in 1980. From 1989 through 1998, Mesa Airlines operated as a conglomeration of up to eight separate airlines. For the history of the acquisition and expansion of Mesa Airlines during l 2 time frame see Mesa Air Group. The following history section details the history of the individual airlines that comprised Mesa Airlines during this time frame.

The original Mesa Air Shuttle was a flight division of JB Aviation in Farmington, New Mexico and operated routes from Farmington to Albuquerque and Denver. In 1982 the original owners sold the company to Larry and Janie Risley who over the next seven years established the airline with a presence in New Mexico and built a hub in Albuquerque with up to 46 daily departures to 18 cities. In 1987 a Denver hub was created when Mesa acquired Centennial Airlines which operated several routes from Denver into Wyoming. Mesa also added new routes from Denver to Cortez, Santa Fe, and Telluride. After an initial route from Farmington and Gallup to Phoenix began in 1985, Phoenix was expanded into a hub in 1989 with new routes to Bullhead City, Lake Havasu City, Prescott, and Sierra Vista, Arizona. In 1990, most Denver flights were incorporated into the United Express division which Mesa had acquired from Aspen Airways. In 1992, when Mesa established a code share with America West Airlines, its Phoenix hub was turned over to the America West Express division. A minor hub was also operated at Farmington in the late 1980s with up to 22 daily flights connecting Albuquerque, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City to Durango, Cortez, and Telluride, CO. For a brief time in 1995 and 1996, the Mesa Airlines operation at Albuquerque, the United Express operation in Denver, and the America West Express operation in Phoenix were all known as operated by Mountain West Airlines. In 1997 and 1998, routes from Little Rock to Nashville and Wichita and from Nashville to Tupelo were added, first as Mesa Airlines, then later as US Airways Express.

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