My thinking would be that a company in financial distress (aka looking for ways to save money) would seek HIGHER mins for upgrade to lower insurance and training costs. Not sure who the heck even pays the insurance, or how it all works out, but I would suspect the whole 3407 thing would make an insurer want more money from anyone associated with Colgan, even on the 9e/XJ side of things.

On a side note, has anyone considered the sick irony of all of this?--Pinnacle Holdings fought tooth and nail in court and arbitration hearings for years to keep Colgan and 9e separate, and succesfully fought off the obvious notion that the whole shebang was a single carrier (and somehow convinced everyone that Corp is a "holding compny" not "an airline.")

After spending a lotta money to lobbyists and lawyers to fight off a forced merger of Colgan & 9e, now they're getting screwed financially precisely BECAUSE they continue to run duplicated everything...

If 9e, Inc. would've done the right thing from the get go, and simply merged Colgan with 9e the second they bought them (with 2-year fences and seatlocks on seat changes), they would be in a much, much better position to absorb XJ efficiently and with minimum duplication of costs.

Classic illustration of the fact that corporations screw up when they obsess over short-term returns, while employees' opinions on things are actually typically better for the company in the long-run.