Air India is scheduled to take delivery in late May or early June of the first of 27 Boeing 787s it has on order, followed about a month later by receipt of the first 787 to roll off a new assembly line in South Carolina. But who will fly the new jets when they arrive?

Malaysia Airlines' (MAS) turboprop carrier, Firefly, began operations in April 2007 and since then has experienced double-digit growth year-on-year. It also prides itself on having higher profit margins than the global industry average.

Here is a regional airline with Chinese characteristics—one that is growing so fast that it is rapidly picking up mainline characteristics. In just five years, the company has evolved from operating Dornier 328s to Embraer ERJ 145s, then Embraer 190s and now Airbus A320s. By mid-decade it plans to take the remarkably non-regional step of introducing widebodies for intercontinental services. A freight subsidiary is also in the works.

With projected fleet growth and expected pilot retirements, it is inevitable there will be a shortage of crews to fill commercial flight decks. It is just a question of when and where, with some regions already feeling the pinch. So training provider CAE is getting ready to respond to demand by acquiring the flight-school, type-rating and crew-sourcing capacity of Oxford Aviation Academy (OAA) of Canada, arguably the leading name in ab-initio pilot training.

In recent years, it has been fairly easy to paint the regional airline industry with a broad brush: it is dominated by North America and perpetually struggling. But while U.S. regionals continue to be battered by bankruptcies and squeezed by major carriers, there is a bright side to the industry. In other parts of the world, regionals such as Wideroe and Rex are growing and even prospering. In this package of articles, Aviation Week's global team looks at carriers in four different markets to see why they are succeeding—or not succeeding, in the case of the U.S.

International Airlines Group (IAG) finally got a grip on its most important takeover target, acquiring BMI in April. Now the task of integration begins. IAG unit British Airways has been pursuing BMI literally for years, since gaining control of its smaller competitor appeared to be the only way to access more slots at its London Heathrow Airport home base.

The financial cost to Airbus of fixing cracks in A380 wing components may be coming into focus, but it is harder to define the reputational cost the aircraft maker faces among customers that have suffered service disruptions with their flagship aircraft.

The key to a positive future for the largest U.S. regional carriers, albeit an uncomfortable one for many of them, may have surfaced near the end of the SkyWest conference call on its first-quarter 2012 earnings: first survive, and then potentially thrive.