What AMR was asking had very little to do with matching our massive 70-76 seater outsource orgy. It went waaaaaaaaay further than that. A319 B scale, E190's at the cut throats and unlimited domestic code share with AS and JB (and others?) Basically, almost all narrowbody flying gone. Back in 2001 the grave dancing no talent hack POS's at UAL proposed the complete gutting of narrowbody flying and used the rolled up 1113c newspaper as the "or else". Thankfully for the entire profession, the UAL pilots, even though they gave up an awful lot, called their bluff and finally said "enough is enough, shut it down if you have to you lying liars."

The fact that RJ's have been "scoped off" mainline lists is one of the primary reasons its little real estate bubble happened in the first place. Managements at legacy airlines ordered them just because they could, and just because they were cheap and just because others were ordering them and rewarding themselves with bonuses for doing so. I think Bar's 25 Billion number pretty much proves that. On overpriced, overcommitted, POS bubble-jets. Of course they couldn't work at a mainline "cost structure"...they can't even work at the slaughterhouse floors at the likes of Mesa or Pinnacle. They just don't work at all at anywhere near the extent they've been tried.

They don't outsource their core business because they are savvy; they do it because it is a religion to them and that's how they have been brainwashed to think since right out of high school when they started regurgitating their rote curriculum in pursuit of academic approval which leads to employability. Its certainly not because they're on to something that works so well that it has to be replicated, yet they are (almost all) stuck on stupid with that one particular concept. Its not about the RJ airframe. Its about the outsourcing. If we allowed them to do to our top end what they do to our bottom end, Pinnacle would be taking their 777's and 7ER's into the same bankruptcy they are with their "RJ's".