Could 76-seat, two-class American Airlines jets soon be based at Harrisburg Int'l Airport?
HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — It still has fewer flights and higher fares than larger airports, but that has been changing at Harrisburg International Airport, which also has something few other airports its size have: an airline's maintenance and crew base.
Since 2022, Piedmont Airlines, which flies the 50-seat ERJ-145s commonly seen at the airport ('ERJ' stands for 'Embraer regional jet'), has based dozens of pilots and flight attendants at the airport, complementing a maintenance base that opened years earlier.
Piedmont — which is headquartered in Salisbury, Maryland, and is a subsidiary of American Airlines — also has a Harrisburg-based human resources team.
The Harrisburg presence means a lot of direct jobs and — although this part is harder to quantify — indirectly perhaps some flights that might not otherwise exist, because American has to route planes through Harrisburg for maintenance and to get its people to and from work.
For perspective, Delta operates three daily flights to its Atlanta hub, which is the world's busiest airport, according to an abc27 analysis of Cirium schedule data; American operates seven daily flights to Charlotte. (Delta, operating larger aircraft, offers about half as many seats to Atlanta as American offers to Charlotte despite having fewer than half as many flights.)
But there was an important potential problem for Piedmont's future — and thus for the future of its base in Harrisburg: Manufacturers haven't produced 50-seat jets in years, and airlines have been phasing them out in favor of larger regional jets, which passengers generally find to be more comfortable and airlines generally find to be more economical to operate. Piedmont currently operates 69 ERJ-145s, which are on average almost 22 years old, according to an abc27 analysis of Cirium airline fleet data.
That meant one of two things: Sooner or later, either the airline would have to either phase in new planes — or phase itself out of existence, as other regional airlines have done (most recently Silver Airways just Wednesday, which once flew small planes branded 'Continental Express' for United's predecessor Continental Airlines).
Fortunately for Piedmont — and by extenstion, for Harrisburg — the far better outcome is emerging: Piedmont announced it'll get 76-seat Embraer 175s, known as E175s, beginning in 2028. Unlike the current all-economy 50-seat jets, Piedmont's E175s — like others already flown for American by other regional airlines — will have 12 business-class seats in addition to 64 economy seats.
'So seeing that they're getting an upgrade in aircraft that allows them to continue their mission of flying for American and being part of the Central Pennsylvania community is really good news,' Scott Miller, Harrisburg International Airport's spokesman, said.
'The expansion represents a significant investment by parent company American Airlines Group,' Piedmont said in a statement of the 45 eventual E175s it expects to receive. During the transition, the airline plans to continues operating its 50-seat jets 'well into the 2030s,' the statement said.
'They provide all of our service to Philadelphia, to Boston, as well as some to Charlotte,' Scott Miller said of Piedmont. 'So upgrading to larger aircraft — more comfortable aircraft — is a huge benefit for the airport, for the region and for those who fly American.'
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Harrisburg is just one of three crew bases for Piedmont, alongside much larger Philadelphia and Charlotte, which are both American Airlines hubs. Piedmont has maintenance bases at those three airports plus Salisbury; Albany, New York; and in Virginia, Richmond and Roanoke.
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