Thread: Great Lakes Pulls out of ND, Big Oil Emerging Cities up for Grabs..

Great Lakes Airlines will be leaving North Dakota by the end of the month after serving the state for more than two decades. The Wyoming-based regional airline announced last week that it was suspending service to DIK and ISN. In January, it pulled out of Devils Lake and JHW.
Steve Kjergaard, the airport manager at ISN said the biggest issue for the company in recent months was finding enough pilots to staff flights. When an airline can't staff a flight, it has to cancel it, and Kjergaard said the company has been having trouble regularly operating its flights.
Great Lakes has previously said it was pulling out of several regional airports because of problems retaining pilots. The company cited new federal rules that require co-pilots to log 1,500 flight hours before they can work for commercial airlines. They previously required 250 hours.
The new Federal Aviation Administration rules that took effect last August, combined with airline industry staffing shortages caused by longtime pilots retiring, has made staffing for regional airlines very difficult, especially over the past six months, said Jim Higgins, an associate professor of aviation at the University of North Dakota.
"Right now, there's clearly not enough pilots who are willing to go and work at regional airlines," Higgins said in an interview Tuesday. "Most of the regional airlines out there, the smaller carriers out there, they're reporting that they're not able to hire as many pilots as they want."