Envoy Air
Envoy Air Inc. is an American regional airline headquartered in Irving, Texas, in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the American Airlines Group and it is paid by fellow group member American Airlines to staff, operate and maintain aircraft used on American Eagle flights that are scheduled, marketed and sold by American Airlines. Envoy Air operates a fleet consisting of exclusively Embraer regional jet aircraft. The company has a team of more than 18,000 employees, operating more than 1,000 daily flights to over 150 destinations in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Caribbean and South America. Envoy was formerly known as American Eagle Airlines and was formed when American's parent company merged several airlines owned by the group and operating regional flights. The name was changed to avoid confusion with other regional carriers that operate on behalf of American Eagle. The name "American Eagle Airlines" was also used between April 1980 and April 1981 by an unrelated air charter service that suspended operations and filed bankruptcy before flying any scheduled operations.
Key facts
History
Envoy began as a collection of regional carriers with contracts to carry the American Eagle brand name. The first American Eagle flight was operated by Metroflight Airlines, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of Metro Airlines (formerly Houston Metro Airlines), on 1 November 1984, from Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Fort Smith, Arkansas, to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. Metroflight utilized Convair 580 turboprop aircraft that had been formerly operated by Frontier Airlines.
Other carriers that have flown in American Eagle livery include Executive Airlines, Command Airways, Air Virginia, Simmons Airlines, Chaparral Airlines and Wings West Airlines. Among other aircraft in its fleet, Chaparral flew Grumman I-C turboprops which were stretched, 37 passenger regional airliner versions of Grumman's successful propjet business aircraft and was one of only a few air carriers to ever operate the type in scheduled passenger service.
Until 1987 these third-party carriers flew under contract with American Airlines to provide regional feed to its hubs. During 1987 and 1988 AMR Corp. acquired its regional carriers, starting with Simmons Airlines. AMR's final airline d.b.a. American Eagle acquisition was Executive Airlines in 1989.
By mid-1991 AMR had consolidated the number of carriers to four. The May 15, 1998, merger of Wings West and Flagship into Simmons (and the name change of Simmons Airlines to American Eagle Airlines) reduced the number of carriers flying as American Eagle under separate operating certificates to two: American Eagle Airlines and Executive Airlines.
American Eagle Airlines launched its regional jet service in May 1998 using Embraer ERJ 145 aircraft.
AMR struck a codesharing deal with Trans World Airlines (TWA), allowing TWA to sell American Eagle Airlines flights feeding into Los Angeles and later New York's JFK Airports. These services were branded by TWA as Trans World Connection flights. These American Eagle Airlines/Trans World agreements were forged well in advance of AMR's acquisition of TWA in 2001.
During 2007, AMR began studying ways to spin American Eagle Airlines off into a separate company, including, but not limited to, the possibility of selling the company to stockholders or an unaffiliated third party. In 2008, AMR said any plans had been put on hold until the airline industry stabilized after the 2008 financial crisis. In July 2011, AMR announced the spin-off of American Eagle Airlines, but those plans were again shelved when AMR filed for bankruptcy in November 2011.
On 14 January 2014, American Airlines Group officially announced the rebranding of its American Eagle subsidiary as Envoy. Aircraft operated by American Eagle continued to operate under the current American Eagle branding, but an "Operated by Envoy Air" label was added, similar to the label used by other contract airlines that fly aircraft with American Eagle livery. This name change was created to avoid confusion when American Airlines announced that other regional carriers would operate on behalf of American. The term 'Envoy' is a reincarnation of the now deprecated Envoy Class of seating on US Airways aircraft.
Its airports
Its main hubs
Other airports in its network
Where we have documented most of its aircraft
A count of our own aircraft profiles, year by year, from the public United States flight records: it reflects what we have documented, not the airport’s total traffic.
Route network according to OpenFlights (open route database). It may not reflect recent schedule changes.
Data from Wikidata (CC0) · summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).
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This page was last updated on September 26, 2026
APA
Vuelopedia. (2026, September 26). Envoy Air. Retrieved October 16, 2026, from https://vuelopedia.org/en/airline/envoy-air
MLA
“Envoy Air.” Vuelopedia, Fundación Poderia, 26 Sept. 2026, vuelopedia.org/en/airline/envoy-air. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.
Chicago
Vuelopedia. “Envoy Air.” Fundación Poderia. Last modified September 26, 2026. https://vuelopedia.org/en/airline/envoy-air.
Harvard
Vuelopedia (2026) Envoy Air. Available at: https://vuelopedia.org/en/airline/envoy-air (Accessed: 16 October 2026).
BibTeX
@misc{vuelopedia_en_airline_envoy_air,
author = {{Vuelopedia}},
title = {{Envoy Air}},
publisher = {Fundación Poderia},
year = {2026},
date = {2026-09-26},
url = {https://vuelopedia.org/en/airline/envoy-air},
howpublished = {\url{https://vuelopedia.org/en/airline/envoy-air}},
urldate = {2026-10-16},
note = {Accessed 2026-10-16}
}Wikipedia
{{cite web |url=https://vuelopedia.org/en/airline/envoy-air |title=Envoy Air |website=Vuelopedia |publisher=Fundación Poderia |date=2026-09-26 |access-date=2026-10-16 |language=en}}Types it operates · 55 aircraft · 2 models
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