Originally Posted by Slick111

Well let's look at recent history, (past 20 years or so). Regional airlines use to operate 7 seat Navajos. They then increased to 15 seat Beech 99's and Bandeirantes (EMB-110), followed by 19 seat Beech 1900's, Jetstreams, and Metroliners. Then they added 30 passenger Shorts 330's and Saabs, followed by EMB-120 Brasilias. Finally, regional airlines incorporated CRJ-100s, 200, 700, and now 900s.

History shows us that increasing regional aircraft capacity may help result in "more feed for mainline", but it certainly hasn't resulted in "additional mainline jets to handle the increase in passengers"!

It's called "the lost decade" and it's largely due to the INCREASE in regional aircraft capacity.