The Demise of Calumet Airlines

The seeds of Calumet's downfall were planted in 2012 when Delta ended their contract with Calumet for CRJ-200s in favor of increasing Endeavour's operations. The aircraft used for Delta Connection were now a surplus and began to get sold off. However, the airline also had a surplus of pilots. What resulted was a lengthy period of turmoil between the airline and it's pilots. A compromise between pilots whose jobs were at risk and the airline was finally materialized in 2014, but the airline's reputation was sullied by the incident.

Another problem arose when United and Calumet agreed to concentrate United focus solely on the CRJ-700 in 2017. This was a problem for Calumet as they discovered that they had too many CRJ-200s that they couldn't sell. Agreements were reached to stretch out this switch of equipment to a deadline of 2021 but the problem lingered.

The beginning of the COVID-19 recession marked the final plunge of the airline. With the downturn in travel United and American expressed their desire to terminate their contracts with Calumet. The stability of Calumet's partnerships were already questionable but a loss of both contracts would be fatal to the airline. It couldn't survive on it's money-losing standalone operations and had suspended them at the start of the nationwide lockdown.

In July of 2020 United announced that they would break their partnership with Calumet by 2022. American Airlines demanded a renewal in their contract and threatened a termination of the contract altogether.. Negotiations commenced between the two companies in October of that year. American's demands were aggressive but Calumet was unwilling to give an inch.

On November 16, 2020, American announced that they would end their partnership with Calumet. Faced with the loss of both contracts, Calumet filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and ceased all operations the next day. The airline's assets were liquated and sold off to other regional airlines. In May of 2021, after a failed attempt at restarting 2 months prior, the FAA revoked the airline's operating license, bringing an end to one of Chicago's hometown airlines.

Flight 2192 was half to Detroit from Chicago when the airline announced they would cease operations. This flight was operating for United Express. The pilots learned of this yet decided to continue on to Detroit where they were greeted by confused and frustrated passengers, as well as Calumet employees packing up and going home for the final time.

By 2022, all of Calumet's fleet had been sold off to other airlines and repainted. However, one aircraft partially remained in the airline's livery. This aircraft was stored indefinitely at O'Hare and used as a fire trainer. It remains at the airport to this day.