Cape Air BTW does do a number of EAS-subsidized routes in their system (e.g. locally Mayagüez MAZ). But for Cape Air it is a viable business case to fly little airplanes on short hops between small cities/towns and islands and eventually feeding into regional hubs. When it only takes 5 people to be half-full, the crew is 1, and your plane did not cost 40 million it’s slightly easier to make it. Things get iffy though if you get a situation where there is a location that may require more capacity than that, but not enough to justify a dedicated mainline-brand service. As mentioned a whole bunch of US locations are on a similar boat, at best retaining one 40-seater at 6am as the only way to get to somewhere a major carrier serves.
They’re flying mostly to vacation destinations (Nantucket, MV, Provincetown, Bar Harbor, Saranac Lake, Bar Harbor, Hyannis) from some major starting points (Boston, Islip, JFK). The other destinations (Lebanon, Rutland, Augusta) are apparently big enough to support some traffic. The few other oddballs (New Bedford, Norwood) only fly to Nantucket, so that’s probably easier for folks who don’t want to travel into Boston.
Their Carribean routes all look like vacation travel destinations. I don’t know enough about their Montana routes.
I suspect they have some higher price points due to their passengers and destinations. For example I looked at a Boston/Martha’s Vineyard route where they compete against JetBlue. The Cape Air flights are 2-4x more expensive than JetBlue, but there are 10 per day versus 1 for JB. For the Boston/Nantucket route they compete against AA and JB, and they offer 10 flights versus 3 for their competitors, but the prices is about 2x.
I also checked Boston/Rutland VT where they have no direct competitors and the prices are quite low. Same with Boston/Augusta ME.
Regarding the Essential Air Services routes…
I used to fly for an airline that did a lot of EAS and I agree that it’s a necessary solution for many cities that would be otherwise not be served at all by an air carrier. As for determining whether a route would be profitable if it were run “at risk” (which is the term of art), it’s not as simple as it may sound.
One airline that did EAS also had an at risk route between Boston and Islip on Long Island. Sounds good, right? It turned out they misunderstood the market needs. The flights weren’t timed well for someone trying to get to Boston early for business, and there wasn’t enough demand for Islip as an alternate NYC destination (which is what they’d really been betting on). It didn’t last long.
In my airline experience I went to quite a few small cities that would have had very few options without EAS.
Edit: Many of the crew at my company were pretty right wing, some of them vocally anti-government. So it was fun to poke at them: “Hey, how do you like all this government funding that our airline basically survives on?”
EAS-subsidized routes. Same for Augusta, Rockland, Bar Harbor, Rutland, Saranac and Lebanon in New England.
And yes their Caribbean routes mostly involve connecting people whose flights from or to CONUS arrive or depart SJU or STT to short hops to the smaller islands or to resort town airports.
Can anyone identify this aircraft? I can’t tell if it’s a Cessna 195, or a De Havilland. (Cessna’s my first guess.)
Cessna 195
Pre-crash photo
Is “popular hard” like “wicked smart”? 
How many crashes occur with fatalities and the aircraft not written off?
Well, taking the question semi-seriously, vintage warbirds typically get rebuilt from devastating crashes. The rarity and value are so high that it doesn’t make sense to just throw them away, even after horrific damage.
Something people may be missing in this discussion of service to local airports. The local airport is only going to fly to a couple or so other airports and you have to do a transfer (with perhaps a several hour wait) to fly everywhere else, while the more distant big city airport flies direct to dozens of locations. And as mentioned the local airport is going to be more expensive. So driving to the big city airport can be both significantly cheaper and also have a shorter end to end travel time [because no transfer wait].
Long ago we were contemplating joining with friends from Chicago in Flagstaff, about 200 miles north of Phoenix. I think they were figuring the trip would be like driving 200 miles in Illinois because at first they wanted to fly to FLG but on checking it cost more to fly between Phoenix and there than it did for the Chicsgo to Phoenix leg. They decided to get picked up at Sky Harbor and ride up with us and were suitably impressed at the climb up to the Rim..
Inches From Disaster: Qatar-Bound 777F’s Wing Nearly Strikes Ground In Risky Low Pass
The pilot initiated a right bank at the aircraft’s lowest point, bringing the 777F’s wingtip within feet, or perhaps even inches, of contact with the ground. While the flyover was already questionably low, the banking maneuver at such an altitude was incredibly dangerous. Even a slight gust of wind at the wrong moment could have led to disaster.
Horseshoe Bay’s airport features a 6,000-foot runway designed primarily for private jets and smaller regional aircraft, and also sits right next to a residential community.
https://simpleflying.com/qatar-777-freighter-wing-low-pass-near-disaster/
Watch the video.
The list I checked showed expiration dates for the EAS subsidies to different towns, some of them as early as this year. Is that a permanent expiration, or is this one of those things that’s routinely extended? I saw references to Cape Air expanding their fleet (don’t know if they were purchase or lease), so they seem like they’re expecting their business to be sustainable long-term.
And if Lethbridge doesn’t have enough demand for air service to keep a 40-seater in business, how about 20, or 11, or 9? Lower the supply until it matches the demand.
The award to a specific carrier to be the provider at a location has a fixed time duration and upon ending a new RFP must be issued for renewal or replacement. The continued existence of EAS itself, like all other FAA/DOT activities, and what are eligible destinations, are usubject to the periodic FAA reauthorization legislation in Congress. It’s one of those items that “budget hawks” regularly propose eliminating and the Congress regularly extends anyway.
You still need a pilot and staff so the cost per passenger is going to skyrocket the lower the number of passengers you carry.
The cost of labor (the pilot) will be spread across 10 passengers, rather than 40, so that goes up; but the cost of the plane and fuel goes down with a smaller aircraft. My dad worked for a regional airline for a while. To hear him tell it, the pilots there got paid peanuts. I always thought it was like professional baseball; you can barely scratch out a living until you get called up to the majors and cash in.
This is notoriously so in the US regionals, even those brand-affiliated with the majors.
Cape Air pays a bunch less than any RJ airline does. Or at least did 15-20 years ago.
Question as I sit on my flight from BOS to BZN—on a full A320 flight at cruising altitude is the cabin being heated or cooled? I know it’s-50 out but the pax are putting off a lot of heat…