Originally Posted by IFLYPLANEZBRO

Regionals base their contracts based on income cost spread. When they do this their income is based on complete asset portfolio income. This is how they can bid so low. They don't look at the united planes and say ok those planes we are still making payments on will produce this and base their bid off of that. They also include the planes that are completely paid off as well. That way they can bid less and have a better chance of getting the contract. (In not sure I'm explaining this well) what this means is that if they cannot utilize ALL of their planes minus reserve metal (whatever optimization rate they go for) for income they will struggle to make payments on the planes they owe on. It doesn't matter who stops paying (aa, ua, or da) if any of them stop republics in trouble.