Christopher Elliott Travel columnist • Profile • E-mail

If you’re reluctant to fly, maybe you’ve got Regional Jet Stress Syndrome.

RJSS is an anxiety disorder that develops after exposure to undersize aircraft and all the ups and downs that come with it. You won’t find any references to this malady outside of this article, but let me assure you that the symptoms are very real.

Just ask Kathy Hall-Zientek, who recently found herself stuck on a puddlejumper from Buffalo, N.Y., to New York’s LaGuardia airport. “We sat in the rear of the aircraft and watched the fear in people’s faces in the row ahead of me,” she remembers. “It was a mother and teenage daughter who held hands and prayed.”

But that's only half the trauma of RJSS. The regional carriers operating these planes don't necessarily offer the same amenities or have the same service standards you'll find on bigger planes. Taken together, it means that a flight on a regional jet is far more likely to leave you swearing off air travel for good.

And there’s more bad news. This summer, as airlines try to save money by cutting capacity, the odds that they’ll downgrade your flight to regional jet service — and that you’ll be afflicted with RJSS — are higher than perhaps ever.

Let me put that into a little perspective. More than 400 communities — about 70 percent of the places with commercial airline service — rely on smaller regional airlines, according to the Regional Airline Association, a trade group. (About one-third of those flights are on turboprops. I’m not going to split hairs here — Either way, we’re talking a small plane.) Roughly 1 in 5 passenger enplanements — that’s trade industry jargon for a person boarding a plane — is on a regional carrier today.

It’s possible you could end up boarding one of the gleaming new regional jets that are, in many respects, nicer than their bigger brothers. JetBlue’s super-comfortable Embraer 190 comes to mind. But on balance, regional jets and the airlines that operate them tend to be pretty dreadful when you run the numbers. For example:

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Many flights are chronically late
Of the 10 most delayed flights in America, half were on regional airlines, including No. 1, Mesa flight 7124 from Chicago to Mosinee, Wis. It was late 91 percent of time, with an average delay of 37 minutes. Not to pick on Mesa, but it had three flights in the top ten, including flight 7155 from Chicago to Springfield, Ill., which was delayed an average of 67 minutes. That’s right, it was delayed by more than an hour. On average.

Regional carriers lose more luggage
Regional airlines are bottom-feeders when it comes to luggage. The last Transportation Department report card found all the regionals it tracks round out the bottom of its lost and mishandled luggage list, with Atlantic Southeast coming in dead last with 15.69 lost or mishandled baggage reports per 1,000 passengers for the month of March. The top carrier, Hawaiian Airlines, had just 2.44 reports.

You have fewer rights on smaller aircraft
For example, if your aircraft has fewer than 30 seats, the government doesn’t require the airline to compensate you for bumping you from the flight. That lets some of the regional airlines off the hook when they overbook. It used to be worse: the number was recently lowered from 60 passengers, which applied to practically every regional flight.

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