Endeavor Air

Is Endeavor Air safe?

Endeavor is a safe airline with one serious accident in its recent history, and nobody died in it. We score it 76. On 17 February 2025, Delta Connection 4819, an Endeavor CRJ900, landed hard at Toronto Pearson, lost its right wing and came to rest upside down on the snow. All 76 passengers and 4 crew got out; 21 were hurt.

Endeavor flies Delta Connection routes from Minneapolis, Detroit, New York and Atlanta, mostly in 76-seat CRJ900s, with DL flight numbers. Delta owns it outright. It was Pinnacle Airlines until Delta took it over out of bankruptcy and renamed it in 2013, so Pinnacle's record is part of its history. It holds its own FAA certificate, with about 1,770 pilots. We score it on its own, as we do other regional airlines; the Delta page describes the Toronto crash too.

What happened at Toronto?

The flight from Minneapolis was cleared for an instrument approach to runway 23 in a strong, gusting wind. The Canadian Transportation Safety Board's preliminary report sets out the last half-minute. The first officer was flying and disconnected the autopilot just below 500 feet. The crew had set a target speed of 144 knots and flew the approach at about 149 to allow for the gusts, within the company's rules. At 153 feet a gust raised the airspeed, the thrust levers came back, and the engines stayed at that lower setting until touchdown.

The descent rate roughly doubled, to about 1,100 feet per minute, and the ground proximity system called "sink rate" 2.6 seconds before touchdown. The right main gear hit the runway in a 7.5 degree bank at about 3 g. The side-stay holding that gear broke, the gear folded, the right wing broke off at the root and the spilled fuel caught fire. The fuselage slid down the runway, rolled over and lost most of its tail. The passengers left through a forward door and an over-wing exit; the pilots climbed out through the cockpit roof hatch.

The TSB's final report is not out yet. In February 2026 it said its metallurgical work on the wing and gear was complete and that it was still analysing the flight data, simulator runs and the evacuation. The open question is how much the hard landing alone explains, and whether the gear and wing should have failed the way they did. For our score it is a hull lossHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary without deaths in the last 20 years, which puts the accident record at 80, the bottom of the 80 to 94 band.

The rest of Endeavor's record

No one has died on an Endeavor or Pinnacle flight since October 2004, when two Pinnacle pilots crashed an empty CRJ200 at Jefferson City, Missouri, after pushing it to its maximum altitude. That is outside our 20-year window. The only other aircraft lost since was a parked CRJ200 at Providence, written offHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary in 2012 after a fire in ground equipment damaged its electrical system.

What lowers the score is the pattern of smaller events, several of them involving gusty landings:

• 26 February 2026, Atlanta: a CRJ700 from Montgomery struck both wing tips during a go-around in gusty crosswinds. The NTSB's final report blamed the captain's handling of the crosswind.
• Wing-tip strikes on landing: AeroInside lists at least six more since 2021, at New York, Detroit, Chattanooga and Kalamazoo.
• 29 November 2025, Des Moines: a CRJ900 from Detroit slowed after landing on a snow-covered runway, then skidded straight off the paved surface as it tried to turn off. Nobody was hurt.
• 1 October 2025, LaGuardia: two Endeavor CRJ900s collided at a taxiway junction. The NTSB's preliminary report says the departing jet had been told to give way to the arriving one; the wing of one tore into the other's nose and windshield.

Endeavor jets have also been hit while standing still: by a Delta A350 at Atlanta in 2024, by an ITA Airways A330 at JFK in 2023 and by a Delta 767 at JFK in 2018. None of those was Endeavor's fault, but they show how crowded its hub ramps are.

What does Endeavor fly?

At the end of 2025, Endeavor flew 125 CRJ900s and 19 CRJ700s for Delta, according to Delta's 10-K. A single aircraft family keeps training simple. The CRJ is a mature, widely flown design, but it has conventional controls rather than fly-by-wireFly-by-wireA flight control system in which the pilot's inputs go to computers, which then move the control surfaces. Many such systems also stop unsafe manoeuvres.More in the glossary, and Endeavor does not publish fleet ages.

Flying Delta Connection with Endeavor

• Check "operated by" at booking. Delta Connection flights are run by Endeavor, SkyWest or Republic. All fly under the same FAA rules.
• Expect winter disruption at Minneapolis, Detroit and small northern airports. A cancellation in a crosswind storm is the system working.
• In an evacuation, go to the exit the crew points to. At Toronto the cabin was upside down and the cockpit door and several exits could not be used; everyone left through one door and one window exit.

How we scored it

The Toronto hull lossHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary sets the accident record at 80. FAA oversight scores 85, below Delta because Endeavor is not an IATA member and we could not confirm its IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary status. An all-CRJ fleet (65), repeated wing-tip strikes and taxiway collisions (64) and a winter-heavy network (76) give 76, above PSA Airlines, whose 2025 collision was fatal, and level with Jazz.