Originally Posted by fosters

It depends on the airline. For a large carrier with a marketing department, sales, etc yes that's correct.

For a labor staffing company, which is basically all some "airlines" are, the pay rate would be a significant portion of their operating cost.

Example, according to BTS data I was reviewing several years ago, the operating cost of an XYZ ERJ was significantly less than my companies CRJ. When I looked at the numbers, the XYZ ERJ company paid $0.50/gal for JetA, my company was paying $3. This inflated the overall operating cost of my company, reducing the labor cost. It would have the opposite effect on the XYZ ERJ company.

The majors these days are buying the aircraft and just using the regionals to staff them. The regional airline has no back end to sustain. The operating cost of those airplanes is incredibly low (and labor % incredibly high) because the only thing they are really paying out is labor. Everything else, for all intents and purposes, is a zero cost.

If you look at Republic and Compass, I would bet Republic owns their aircraft where as Compass does not. Anyone know if that is true?