Commercial airline service is in a retrenchment mode, thanks in part to pilot shortages, particularly at the regional carriers, and reduced demand for service, especially at airports serving small communities. A case in point is Del Rio, Texas (DRT), which will lose its only airline service this spring with the pullout of Mesa Airlines, American Airlines’ regional partner. American has also announced plans to end Mesa-operated service to Columbus, Georgia (CSG) and Long Beach, California (LGB)—although those locations will continue to be served by other carriers. These are hardly isolated cases. According to statistics provided by the FAA at the request of the Aviation Business Journal, 576 airports in the US—including Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and US territories—had scheduled airline service in February 2020. Of that number, 301 saw service reductions, including 24 that lost service completely between February 2020 and February 2023. Over the same timeframe, 104 of the airports had “significant” scheduled service reductions, which the FAA defines as 50% or more. The numbers are based on the average daily scheduled flights by commercial passenger carriers for all US airports. Even the Essential Air Service (EAS) Act subsidy is no guarantee that scheduled airlines will continue to serve an EAS airport, as Adam Cowburn, managing director of Alton Aviation Consultancy in New York, explained. EAS, he pointed out, was created by Congress in the wake of airline deregulation in 1978 to subsidize unprofitable airline service in some markets. Slated to sunset in 1988, EAS is still in force, with $400 million in funding in 2022. According to the latest Department of Transportation (DOT) statistics, 110 airports in the continental US were listed as EAS points as of December 2021. “Subsidies have increased despite the introduction of smaller and more fuel-efficient aircraft, which should help drive down operating costs,”