As I am relatively new to US, I found the following situation a bit surprising. In booking a roundtrip from DCA to BTV, I ended up with different express carriers in different directions - PSA turboprop 1 way and Mesa RJ the other way.

As one whose recent flying experience has been mostly on UA, I know there are different Express carriers in different regions of the country, but I have never encountered different carriers on the same route.

Perhaps those of you with more US experience could say how this comes about and if this is a common occurrence in the US route structure.

Yes, it's a common occurrence and comes about because US has more Express Carriers than any other airline ... heck, US might have more Express carriers than all the other majors combined ...

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by JerryFF:


As one whose recent flying experience has been mostly on UA, I know there are different Express carriers in different regions of the country, but I have never encountered different carriers on the same route.

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UA does this as well -- for example, from Chicago to Moline (a route I unforunately fly more often than I'd like...) both Atlantic Coast and Air Wisconsin offer service.