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Freedom Airlines, Inc. was an American FAA Part 121 certificated air carrier operating under air carrier certificate number FDKA087K issued on April 1, 2002. The Nevada Corporation was headquartered in Irving, Texas and is a subsidiary of Mesa Air Group. It operated flights as Delta Connection for Delta Air Lines serving Delta's hub at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in Hebron, KY, near Cincinnati, OH using EMB 145 aircraft. Freedom's base has been moved to Cincinnati from New York City in July 2009. Freedom previously operated the CRJ-900 aircraft as Delta Connection as well, however, this contract has been canceled and all aircraft and orders will be transferred to Eagan, MN-based Mesaba Airlines and Atlanta, GA-based Atlantic Southeast Airlines as well as Pinnacle Airlines.

The airline was established in March 2002 and started operations in October 2002. It was the launch customer for the Bombardier CRJ-900. The airline was started so that Mesa Air Group could fulfill its contractual obligations to operate the CRJ-900 as America West Express for America West Airlines. Establishing Freedom was necessary as Mesa Airlines was also operating as US Airways Express under a code share agreement for US Airways. US Airways' collective bargaining agreement with the Air Line Pilots Association prohibited contract carrier code share arrangements with regional jet carriers, if that carrier operated aircraft with more than 70 seats. Mesa Airlines, therefore, could not operate as US Airways Express and operate the

A controversial factor of the original Freedom Airlines was the way Mesa Airlines Management went about staffing it. Freedom was originally established as a non-union airline under the objection of the Mesa ALPA MEC. The initial cadre of pilots brought on to staff the operation became known and the Freedom “A-Lister’s” and were perceived in a very negative light by the Mesa pilots who remained on property. The pilots were enticed over, mostly by promises of a quick upgrade. Later when Freedom was drawn down, the pilots were folded back into the Mesa seniority list at their original seniority number much to the consternation of the pilots who remained loyal to the original Mesa list.

Later on, when Freedom was resurrected, it was staffed by rank and file Mesa pilots and the name Freedom lived on truly as a shell entity but was staffed and operated by Mesa personnel.

CRJ-900.
Initially Freedom operated the Bombardier CRJ-700 and CRJ-900 on behalf of America West Airlines. Once US Airways' pilot scope limitation was relaxed, Mesa transferred the operation of all of Freedom's regional jets to Mesa Airlines. Once this transfer was complete Freedom placed 1 Beech 1900D turboprop on its certificate in order to keep the certificate active. No scheduled flights occurred during this period with the Beech 1900, but it was used as a spare aircraft for Air Midwest aircraft flying out of Phoenix under an America West Express codeshare as well as a spare aircraft for Mesa Airlines' Dash-8-200 aircraft operating under a contract for America West. In October 2005, Freedom Airlines began operations as Delta Connection.

ERJ-145 Contract
On April 7, 2008, Mesa Air Group, the parent company of Freedom Airlines, entered litigation about contractual obligations with Delta Air Lines. Delta attempted to terminate the ERJ-145 contract due to supposed failures to meet completion in 3 of the last 6 months. On May 29, 2008, a federal judge blocked Delta from terminating Freedom's regional flying contract which, according to parent company Mesa Air Group would have forced it to file for bankruptcy protection by July 20 and cut 700 jobs or 14 percent of its work force. Since then, the ERJ-145 fleet has been reduced to 22 operating aircraft along with 5 spares.
CRJ-900 Contract

In August 2008, Mesa announced that Delta was terminating Freedom's contract to operate CRJ-900 aircraft. As with the ERJ-145 contract, Mesa alleged that the cancellation was driven by Delta's intention to cut capacity rather than Freedom's failure to meet operational performance standards, as Delta claims. However, unlike the ERJ-145 contract, Delta's attempt to cancel the contract was successful. The seven CRJ-900s were returned to Delta with no further financial obligation to Mesa. They were being operated by Pinnacle Airlines until they receive the last of their CRJ-900s orders. After that, 5 are operated by Mesaba Airlines. The other 2 are operated by Atlanta based Atlantic Southeast Airlines.

Dash 8-100 Contract
Delta Contracted Mesa Airlines to establish a regional feed, initially in many different airports in the Northeast, but eventually consolidated down the base to an operation out of JFK. The contract was fulfilled with Dash 8 100's almost all of which came out of storage with one coming out of a museum. Later on it was discovered that the purpose of using one of the slowest performing turboprops available was to quite literally slow down JetBlue’s operation in JFK and affect their DOT arrival times.

Shutdown
In May 2010, a federal judge ruled against regional carrier Mesa Air Group in the long-running dispute with Delta Air Lines over the larger carrier's right to cancel a regional jet service contract.[8] Mesa said in a statement that it may now have to lay off 500 workers at its Freedom Airline subsidiary because 22 of its regional jets will be without work. On August 31, 2010, the last flight for Freedom Airlines operated.