Thank you all for the feedback!!
(And a few of the posts really cracked me up - made my day!)
I have shared my take on my latest post here: in brief, it sounds, and please correct me if I am wrong, the "regional" page needs (and perhaps the "major" page too?) to allow both type of experiences: the users who wants to browse by "airline", the users who just prefer to see a list of the most recently updated threads, sorted by: most recent first.
New regional sub-forums
I am listening loud and clear, I have asked a question to the users who are saying that it is now too much work to check the regionals: users can still see all the most recent threads by scrolling all the way below the categories.
It's extra work compared to the prev experience,
the questions that I have
for the users who prefer not-to-see the subforums are:
A) do you see all the threads if you scroll down?
B) is this the only impediment that you are currently finding?
Hope this makes sense, thank you again to everyone for taking the time to share. I definitely appreciate and it does help.
Nick