Endeavor Air

Endeavor Air is a regional airline in the United States headquartered at the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines, and staffs, operates, and maintains aircraft used on Delta Connection flights that are scheduled, marketed, and sold by Delta Air Lines.

The airline was founded as Express Airlines I in 1985 and was renamed Pinnacle Airlines in 2002. In 2012, Pinnacle's parent company filed for Chapter 11 reorganization, then emerged as a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines. The airline was renamed Endeavor Air on August 1, 2013.

Its corporate headquarters are located in Delta Air Lines Building C, on the property of Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport. It has hubs in Atlanta, Cincinnati, Detroit, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York's LaGuardia & JFK airports, and Raleigh/Durham. Until the restructuring, Endeavor also operated a hub in Memphis.

In February 1985, the airline was established as Express Airlines I, offering regional airline service to major airlines. The airline's founder, Michael J. Brady, had planned to create several regional airlines under parent company Phoenix Airline Services, Inc, hence the roman numeral "I" in the name. A second company, established as Express Airlines II (known as "Express II"), was created by spinning off Express I's operations at Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport to a separate entity. However, Express II contracted with Express I to provide crew scheduling, operational control, and training. Express II was later recombined back into Express I.

Express I began its first code-sharing agreement, in May 1985, with Republic Airlines. Republic was the dominant carrier in Memphis but, in keeping with the hub-and-spoke concept, wanted to add more smaller cities and free up its larger DC-9 jets to serve longer stage-length routes. Express I accomplished this by adding service, operating as Republic Express, to three cities using BAe Jetstream 31 aircraft. Within six months, Express Airlines I was operating in ten markets using nine Jetstream 31s and two Saab 340 aircraft.

By its first anniversary, Republic Express, as the service was known, was operating 20 Jetstream 31s and seven Saab 340s in 32 markets. Following regulatory and shareholder approvals, Northwest Airlines acquired Republic Airlines on October 1, 1986. Subsequently, the Republic Express brand merged with the Northwest Airlink brand.

Over the next decade, Express I provided airline services as Northwest Airlink to 56 cities in the Southeast and upper Mid-West. In 1997, Northwest Airlines bought Express I from Phoenix Airline Services. On April 1, 1997, Express I became a wholly owned subsidiary of Northwest Airlines. In order to consolidate the many Airlink systems operated at that time, Express I ceased flying from Minneapolis-St. Paul, and instead concentrated on the Memphis hub.

In August 1997, Express I moved its corporate headquarters to Memphis, allowing all the various departments to function from its main base of operations. On May 7, 2000, Express I became the launch operator of the Bombardier CRJ at Northwest.