Sort of, if a company enters into long term agreements with them. But over all doing that (banning them in NYC or just market based forces) applies more pressure to make that flying unsustainable. In the end it will be reduced. At first that flying will be spread out elsewhere because its already paid for (just like binding airplane debt, only worse) but forcing water to run uphill gets expensive quick.

I'm convinced that if we allowed 255 more large RJ's the company would commit to them regardless of "need" or even pilot cost. In any case we are now told that these CPA/ASA/RFP/OPP agreements are "at risk" but I wouldn't put too much faith in that. I haven't seen much more than penalties here and there for cancelled flights and poor on time performance.

Truly at risk would be a (one way check valve limited) revenue sharing only program with no obligation to pay for gas or any other expense and a quickly reached hard cap on the revenue that would be shared. But we're not going to see strong agreements like that. They couldn't get the credit to pretend to purchase or lease the aircraft in the first place (ergo its still 100% our debt in real life). Companies will engage in predatory bargaining by submitting impossible low ball bids to get the work and once they have it they will continue to cry poor and sue us for enforcing performance penalties. Either way that lift will be force fed to markets that don't fully (if at all) support it or would be better off with mainline gauge segments just to find a home for it.