Mesa Airlines

Is Mesa Airlines safe?

Yes. Mesa has flown passengers since the early 1980s and no passenger has died on one of its flights. In the last 20 years it wrote off no aircraft. We score it 83, just below SkyWest (84) and a little below its new owner Republic Airways (86). The points it loses come from a run of turbulence injuries, a few crew and maintenance slips, and the strain of a long period of financial trouble that ended with the Republic merger.

Mesa is now a small airline. At the end of September 2025 it flew 60 Embraer E175s with about 234 departures a day to 76 cities, all as United Express. United owns the aircraft. If your United flight out of Houston or Washington Dulles is on a 76-seat Embraer and the booking says "operated by Mesa", this is the airline that flies it.

Has Mesa ever had a fatal crash?

Not with passengers on board. The only death on a Mesa aircraft was in May 1989, when a pilot flying an empty Beechcraft King Air from Santa Monica on a positioning flight continued into cloud near mountains in California and crashed. The NTSB blamed his decision to fly on into bad weather without a flight plan.

The crash people often link with Mesa is Air Midwest flight 5481, a Beech 1900 that pitched up and crashed on take-off from Charlotte in January 2003, killing all 21 on board. Air Midwest was a Mesa subsidiary, but it flew under its own certificate, and the crash is outside our 20-year window.

Mesa's own accidents since 2006 damaged aircraft but hurt no one on board:

• Colorado, January 2007. The fan disk of a CRJ-200's left engine cracked through and broke away in the climb, taking the front of the engine with it; the crew returned to Denver. The NTSB blamed a manufacturing flaw, and also Mesa's maintenance staff, who had not been trained to spot the damage.
• Lake Michigan, April 2007. A thrust reverser cowling came off a CRJ-200's left engine in cruise and struck both tail surfaces. The reverser had jammed on earlier flights, and the NTSB faulted Mesa's maintenance for not fixing it.
• Phoenix, April 2011. Power cables chafed against hydraulic lines in a CRJ-200's rear equipment bay and started a fire, found after landing. The NTSB blamed too little clearance between the cables and the lines.
• Phoenix, May 2015. A CRJ-900 taxiing at the gates hit the winglet of a parked US Airways 757 with its tail.

The rest were ground vehicles or other aircraft hitting Mesa jets on the ramp and, more often, turbulence. Flight attendants were seriously hurt in 2011, 2015, December 2022 (a broken ankle descending into Dulles) and November 2024, when both cabin crew were injured near Cleveland, and a passenger in May 2023. In the 2024 case the NTSB's preliminary report says controllers had a turbulence report from another flight but did not pass it on. We score the accident record 89: decades without a passenger death, but more damage events than Republic or SkyWest, and in the two 2007 events, both inside our 20-year window, the NTSB named Mesa's own maintenance as contributing.

Which incidents count against Mesa?

Three events in the last ten years point at the airline itself. On 14 November 2018, a Mesa E175 that had just landed at Toronto ran past the hold-short line of the parallel runway while an Air Canada A320 was accelerating for take-off; the tower shouted "stop" three times and the E175 stopped before the runway edge. Canada's TSB found the crew had mistaken the hold line for the runway exit line. In January 2019 a CRJ-900 slid off an icy taxiway at Columbia, Missouri, after a warning that braking on that taxiway was almost nil. And in 2024 the same E175 had electrical and navigation failures on 31 July and again on 9 October; the FAA looked into both, but we found no published outcome.

Other events were handled well. In May 2017 an E175 lost hydraulic power over Kentucky and burst all four main tyres landing at Louisville, with no injuries. At Burbank in February 2023 a Mesa crew went around because the tower had cleared a SkyWest jet to take off ahead of them; the NTSB blamed the controller. In April 2026 an E175 returned to Dulles after the crew shut down an engine with high oil temperature.

The last FAA penalty we found is from 2015: a proposed $174,600 for gaps in drug and alcohol testing, outside our ten-year window.

What changes under Republic?

Republic Airways Holdings bought Mesa Air Group on 25 November 2025, and United signed a new 10-year contract for the 60 E175s. Mesa now uses Republic's management, and its training is due to move to Republic's new campus in Carmel, Indiana. But Mesa still holds its own FAA certificate, so its flights and events stay on this page until the certificates merge. Then this record moves to Republic.

The merger also ends a hard few years. Its filings describe heavy costs in 2024 and 2025 from moving its flying from American to United, ending its DHL cargo work and selling its CRJ fleet. Financial strain does not make an airline unsafe by itself, but it can mean pilot turnover and rushed training. Under Republic, that pressure is lower.

How old are Mesa's planes?

Young for a US regional. Mesa flies only the Embraer E175, which it began flying for United in the mid-2010s. In September 2024 its E175s averaged 8.7 years. The jet has two cabins, no middle seats and partial 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 controls. One aircraft type and one partner keep training and maintenance simple.

Tips for flying Mesa

• Keep your belt fastened whenever you are seated. Every serious injury on Mesa flights in the last decade came from turbulence, mostly to standing crew.
• Expect weather delays in Houston in summer. Thunderstorms around the Gulf Coast cause holds, reroutes and the rough rides behind several of those injuries.
• Rebook through United. Mesa runs the flight, but United handles your ticket, bags and compensation.

How we scored it

A record with no passenger deaths and no lost aircraft in 20 years (89, held back by two 2007 maintenance findings), FAA oversight (85) and a young single-type E175 fleet (82) carry the score. A Toronto runway incursion, an icy taxiway excursion and repeated electrical failures on one jet hold incidents at 70, and a busy Houston and Dulles network sits at 76. Together that gives 83.