I'm not sure you're getting it...Our management DID NOT allow our company to get whipsawed (Whipsawed = being played off against another carrier where you each lower your bid in order to secure flying, generally at the expense of the regional and its employees and for the benefit of the mainline carrier and its shareholders). CAL said we want you to do it cheaper or we are bringing in another carrier to do our flying. XJT management said this is our price. Don't like it? Go F&%K yourself!. Er go...NO whipsawing occurred. And its not like we LOST flying, its just on our own terms now, not CAL's. And its not doing so badly either. The charter stuff is a cash cow, the branded stuff is doing better than any one expected and Delta can't get their hands on enough airplanes. So please, explain to me how a "whipsaw" occurred.

CAL has 3-4 regionals flying for them right now (XJT, CHQ, Colgan, Commutair). Having 3-4 jet regionals might have originally been the idea cooked up by Bean Counter Larry and his herd of morons but I don't know that they will stick to that plan after the melt down that was CHQ here in Houston. It was a mess operationally because CAL is used to a seamless system between XJT and mainline where they have a lot of operational control and we know how each other operate (because we operate the same way). They don't have that with CHQ and it has cost CAL dearly, both in term of money and customer satisfaction.

If CAL releases another 25% of the fleet from the CPA, it REMOVES several hog ties in the current CPA with CAL such as a non-compete clause which would allow us to fly into CLE, EWR and IAH for other carriers, it would allow us to charge different carriers different rates (right now Delta is paying the same rate for us as CAL is) and it would allow us to have more than 10 airplanes in another CPA with another carrier (thats why 10 of Delta's planes are CPA and the other 8 are in a revenue sharing agreement).