Regional airliner
airliner for carrying smaller loads on short-haul flights
A regional airliner, commuter airliner or feeder liner is a small airliner that is designed to fly up to 100 passengers on short-haul flights, usually feeding larger carriers' airline hubs from small markets. This class of airliners is typically flown by the regional airlines that are either contracted by or subsidiaries of the larger airlines. Regional airliners are used for short trips between smaller towns or from a larger city to a smaller city. Feeder liner, commuter, and local service are all alternative terms for the same class of flight operations.
History
To keep short routes economical, airlines preferred using second hand aircraft than costlier new aircraft. Older aircraft were put into short haul service as they were replaced by new longer-range designs.
Post-war era
Propeller aircraft of larger airlines were transferred to smaller airlines. Examples included the De Havilland Dragon Rapide biplane and the Douglas DC-3s, in large surplus after the war, which the aircraft manufacturers wanted to replace.
The first piston-powered airliners with 40 seats were the Martin 2-0-2s (introduced in 1947) and Convair CV-240s (1948).
Turboprop designs
The first turboprop powered aircraft emerged like the Vickers Viscount (75 seats, introduced in 1953) and Fokker F27 (44–52 seats, 1958).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Regional airliner” as airliner for carrying smaller loads on short-haul flights. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as airliner for carrying smaller loads on short-haul flights. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q473625. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1948, 1953 and 1958.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Regional airliner” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.