Context

An independent regional airline with a small fleet was preparing to grow its turboprop fleet many times over, without a larger jet network behind it. Its leadeship wanted to know whether a standalone turboprop network could scale, and what had gone wrong for operators that tried.

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Approach

1. We benchmarked the world’s largest turboprop operators on financials, fleet and network structure, to see how the aircraft fits inside each airline.

2. We studied independent regional airlines that had reached scale, and what happened to them next, including earlier cases in the same market.

3. We tested the airline’s own early unit economics against that pattern, and set out what evidence would prove the argument wrong.

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Result

A structural assessment of whether the model can scale, the five ways comparable airlines have broken, and a falsifiable test the airline’s leadership can check against its own data.

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