The legacy carriers offer a variety of destinations that LCC carriers don't come close to touching. Network carriers are not dead, they have been beaten down by a variety of events the past 5 years, including poor management decisions. Look at Europe. In spite of a rise in LCCs the major European carriers are making profits. The network carriers in the US have not learned how to capture the yield they need to make money. I'm not sure that management really wants to make money right now. It's a great opportunity for all mangements industry wide to bring down those arrogant, pesky pilots. Why else would these guys throw more capacity into the system to chase market share? Now that they are faced with the need to actually show a court that they have a viable business plan you now see fleets reduced in size until they can raise fares.

The RJ is the biggest waste of dollars that was ever put in the air. Sarcasti, you have pinned your career to the chance to fly a high cost jet in a low fare business. What happened at Fly i is what will happen at Comair or any other CRJ or EMB 145 operator. You will lose jets and routes because your jets cost too much to fly for the fares the network carrier is getting.

And why do you regional guys think your airlines are managed so much better than the network carriers you denigrate? It doesn't take a genius to make money on a cost plus basis, which is what fee for departure is. Mesa has taken a huge amount of money out of America West over the years because of fee for departure. We pay for the crappy service Mesa gives and they are guaranteed a profit on each segment they fly. It is subsidised service, a service that has been paid for in the past from mainline revenues, a service to expand the reach of the network, to provide a passenger with a greater range of choices and reasons to fly that particular carrier.

Now with the squeeze on cash at the network carriers each part of the company has to make financial sense in order to remain a part of the whole. The regional feed is making less and less sense at these fare levels so you will see more Rjs go bye bye unless fares come back up.

So the question then becomes why should a pilot group lock themselves into a long term concessionary contract which would prevent them from sharing in any future gains? Pilot groups have always stepped up to help out in the past, with the expectation that their sacrifices would be rewarded in the end. For the first time we are seeing management asking for concessions with no payback in better times. That is unacceptable and should be a line in the sand. I applaud Delta pilots for standing up and preventing the rape of their company.