Originally Posted by
NineGturn
This is completely and totally untrue. Considering all their [the regionals'] agreements are negotiated by the very entities that either own them or depend on them. The actual negotiations are for the sole purpose of making money for the managers and providing a low cost contracted source of outsourced labor for mainline carriers. Profits are completely irrelevant except as necessary to keep the business running.
For publicly traded companies (SKW and RJET come to mind) profits are quite rather important to shareholders. Without profit there is no return, without return there is no investor capital, without investor capital there is no going concern.
For privately traded companies (TSH, AWAC) things get murkier due to a lack of SEC filings but the profit motive is the same, and for wholly-owned carriers the regionals can look as good or as bad on a spreadsheet as Mother wants them to.
Which is exactly what I just said in response to your first two paragraphs. You are just trying to explain it in reverse rather than for what it is.
Thank God we all have you to tell us we're wrong and to spell it out for us the "right" way.
They will pay them whatever they need to pay them until they no longer save money for mainline at which point they will do the flying themselves...again.
Agree...but you're not going to see 50, 70 or even 76 seat jets at mainline. While total numbers of "small jets" may shrink due to shifting economics, SOMEBODY is going to fly those airframes as the need for such airframes in a network isn't going to go away.
It is actually much simpler than you would like the line pilots to believe.
The simple solution is MOAR MONEY, but the reason MOAR MONEY isn't there requires a tad bit of consideration.