haha I would hate to butt heads with a SkyBest pilot. A little competition in their Mecca would be a good character builder I heard stories of when Mesaba showed up with their shiny new 900s.

I would imagine a SLC base would be cheaper for the company than an SFO or LAX base but I really have no idea how that works. I know when I lived in SLC I had a great time. It's a really fun city and if you're an outdoorsy kind of person it's hard to beat the location. The commute from MSP would be a big pain though.