Glad u asked. OO gets to indirectly decide what it will and won’t do by the wording in the contract of the CPA. The wording in the AG - OO CPA mitigates how many cycles per 100 flight hours. Cycles cost money. Too many of them and you are not profitable. So OO is forcing AG’s hand to give them longer routs with the wording of the CPA. AG can mix a few short routs in but not too many.
I did not say the Q400 routs flown by the Jet are profitable to QX. I did say that AS depends on them to fill their 737s. It is safe to say that the Q400 has been the bread and butter 737 filler upper for quite some time. The QX aspect of air group is all about creative accounting.