My guess is that they don’t really have a plan for an RJ operation, because UA/DL/AA have already gobbled all that up, and there just aren’t enough pilots to start a new one and the existing ones already have agreements and are maxed out. So they throw a “scope bone” and say “yeah yeah we won’t do any JB Express, but for you to get that we want all these pay concessions, etc” and they give you something that doesn’t cost them anything but get you to give something up in return. Nothing has stopped them form doing this in the last 18 years, and if they wanted it they wouldn’t give it up.