Originally Posted by Skyvector

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I still don't have any concrete evidence, but it would appear that Republic was needing AA to pay them more due to their increased costs and AA didn't want to..as we suspected would happen. Republic wouldnt budge, so AA doubled down and indicated to them that they would just have Envoy replace them in ORD with 20 E175s initially.

Apparently that's when Republic caved and AA withdrew the vacancy. It was a bargaining chip from the beginning.