GAAP would require that they be treated the same. I used to work at an airline that would "shuffle" money between entities. I'll just say that the owner died right before he was to be indicted. That airline and the associated companies are no more.

Cooking the books to make Horizon look worse on the SEC financials would only make the shareholders ask the above question sooner; "Ahh, why are you doing that, because it looks you are wasting my money."

I my former life, at the aforementioned airline, I sat in on meetings where the entire executive agreed on a course of action that was quite obviously a stupid idea that could never work. It failed miserably.

Most likely, AAG saw how profitable OO is for them and someone put forth the idea that if they could just transition QX to 175s that they would also be a cash cow. Executive groupthink said, 'Sounds like a good idea.' A decision was made without much analysis and here we are. Eventually, and pretty soon, reality will rear it's head and someone will say, 'This is stupid. This is a waste of time and money. Why are we doing this?' and that will be the end of jets at Horizon.

Perhaps it has already happened.