SkyWest operates and maintains aircraft used on flights that are scheduled, marketed and sold by four partner mainline airlines.

Frustrated by the limited extent of existing air service, Ralph Atkin, a St. George, Utah, lawyer, purchased Dixie Airlines on April 26, 1972, to shuttle businessmen to Salt Lake City.

It became the eleventh largest regional carrier in 1984 when it acquired Sun Aire Lines of Palm Springs, California, and had its initial public offering in 1986.

On August 15, 2005, Delta sold Atlantic Southeast Airlines to the newly incorporated SkyWest, Inc., for $425 million in cash.

[10] In 2007, SkyWest began code sharing with Midwest Airlines at its hubs in Milwaukee and Kansas City using Bombardier CRJ200 aircraft.

[13] In May 2011, SkyWest replaced Horizon Air on six routes on the West Coast being operated for Alaska Airlines.

The flights were based out of Seattle and Portland and flew to several California cities, including Fresno, Burbank, Santa Barbara and Ontario.

The vast majority of SkyWest's contracts are fixed-fee, with partner airlines paying a set amount for each flight operated, regardless of the number of passengers carried.

[23] As of early 2021, SkyWest operates in 50 smaller cities that are subsidized under the federal government's Essential Air Service program.

Figures that are available for SkyWest Airlines alone (referred to as 'SkyWest Airlines segment' data in the Group accounts), are shown below (as at year ending December 31): Hubs[3] Crew bases[3] Maintenance bases[3] As of June 2024[update], SkyWest flies to 258 destinations throughout North America across 45 states and Washington D.C., five Canadian provinces and 13 Mexican cities.

[35][36][37] Like most regional airlines in the United States, SkyWest is subject to scope clause requirements of its mainline carrier partners and their pilot unions; those requirements limit the size of the aircraft flown by a regional airline, measured in seat capacity.

It does not include aircraft owned by SkyWest but that are: leased to other operators, removed from service, transitioning between agreements with partners, used as spares, parked, or in the process of being parted out.

[7] By 1994, the first jet, a Bombardier CRJ100, was added to the fleet and by 1996 all of the Metro propjets had been retired as they were progressively replaced with Brasilia aircraft.

According to the airline's website, at its inception SkyWest was operating all flights in the early 1970s with small propeller-driven, piston-engine aircraft, including:[7] In October 2023, SkyWest was sued by the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA), who alleged that the company illegally fired two flight attendants as retaliation for engaging in protected union organizing activities and that the company illegally stood up a company union in violation of the Railway Labor Act.