Originally Posted by
YNWA1892
He didn't say he didn't care about regionals. What he said was the regionals job was to get people to mainline at the cheapest cost. He cares about regionals only in the fact that he cares how much it cost him to get people to the hubs. He cares in a money sense but he doesn't care about the pilots and their suffering.
Again, there's only one airline currently out there with a lower cost right now. If DP wants to dole out any wholly-owned flying to other carriers he's going to pay more to do it, plus lose the "in house profit" benefit. He's better off keeping the flying in-house and at least increasing the pay to match what it'd cost to outsource it in some attempt to maintain staffing here.
The only airline that I can think of that could potentially handle the staffing is Expressjet (ERJ side) since they're pretty much going to be gutted soon of all their 50 seaters, but again that is still going to cost more than any wholly-owned.