These things are prohibitively expensive once they reach a certain number of cycles. Comair and Skywest found this out with the CRJ's and now we have quite a few that are getting up there in years. Skywest has already said that they want to re-fleet XJT but they are waiting for United's scope to come through.

Prune Juice: Saying that Skywest isn't as "efficient" of an airline as GoJets is a pretty poor argument. The economies of scale and the deep pockets at Skywest are reason enough to think that their flying is more secure then an airline with 30 airplanes. SKywest/ASA/XJT currently have 650 airframes flying around. I know your management wants you to believe that crew costs are everything but in the big picture they are very small piece of the pie. Gojet got this delta flying either at a loss or at such slim margins that it is going to be hard to get an appreciable return if they can even find the resources to fulfill the contract. Skywest might drop a few airplanes but they have a better shot at being viable down the road.