"We continue to fight a losing battle against weather and congestion in that part of the country, " says Comair spokeswoman Kate Marx.

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Five other airlines -- Atlantic Southeast, Comair, ExpressJet, Mesa and Pinnacle -- didn't get an overall grade because some categories couldn't be completed.

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Total air-related deaths (beyond pilots and engineers) shot up to 215 from 149 in 2005, mainly due to last summer's ComAir crash in Lexington, Ky.

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Comair, meanwhile, pointed to a 40% spike in demand in the Northeast this past year, where weather was also tough during the winter of 2006 to 2007.

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These include BA Connect, GB Airways, Loganair, Sunair and Comair.

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Mann says the big carriers' plans are to concentrate on international and major domestic routes and turn over the shorter hops to their subsidiaries like American Eagle (American), ComAir (Delta) and ExpressJet (Continental).

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Thursday's incident is the first fatal crash of a commercial airliner in the United States since August 2006, when Comair Flight 5191 crashed while attempting to take off from the wrong runway near Lexington, Kentucky.

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Kennedy airport, when an Air France Airbus A380 clipped the tail fins of a much smaller Comair flight CRJ700, observers and analysts have been asking questions about whether a similar accident could happen elsewhere, and just when a super-large jumbo jet is too big.

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