• THIEF RIVER FALLS, Minn. (AP) -- Heather Borgen's in limbo.
• After working 40-plus hours a week for five years at Hertz Car Rental in this northern Minnesota town, Borgen was laid off when the airport's only commercial airline was grounded in February. If and when the airline returns, she plans to do the same -- but that means she's out of work for at least four months.
• "You have no idea how you're supposed to act, what you're supposed to be doing -- you know, you try to find work and nobody's going to hire you for two or three months at max," she said. "They know you're going to go back to the job that you like; the job that you know."
• Great Lakes Airlines, a small regional carrier, suspended its service in February to Thief River Falls, where employees and employers said the air service was a crucial link to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and beyond. The airline also suspended service to other small towns across the Midwest such as Jamestown and Devils Lake, N.D., Ironwood, Mich., and Fort Dodge, Iowa.
• Many others, including Pierre and Watertown, S.D., have seen diminished service as cancellation rates soared. The regional airline industry blames new federal regulations for pilots aimed at increasing airline safety.
• In Thief River Falls, the airline's suspension has cost a handful of residents their jobs and hindered businesses.
• The city of 9,000 is home to international companies like Arctic Cat and Digi-Key Corp., an Amazon-like distributor with 2,800 employees in an operation that sends electronic components to half a million customers in 145 countries.
• "As a global, $1.5 billion business, travel is essential, especially since we're here in the middle of nowhere," said Digi-Key's corporate communications director Michelle Gjerde. Clients fly in from around the world on any given day, she said.
• Great Lakes Airlines and the regional airline industry have said the regulations that require all commercial pilots have 1,500 hours of flying time combined with record retirements of long-time pilots are leaving them without enough people to fly

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