Originally Posted by
Fleet Warp
Regionals dying (not including M&A) has more to do with fatal accidents then anything else.
Recent trends support this. In the old days, small turboprops were expected to crash at least every other month and the public accepted that. They had actual life insurance vending machines at the gates for those flights, you could buy a policy for one day.
Today, jet crashes are not acceptable to the public, and any regional brand which has an at fault crash will likely get shed by the major partners and eventually liquidated (or renamed and merged). Forgone conclusion if it's a big media circus with outrageous cause or contributing factors.
As far as survivability...
Mesa always seems to bounce back.
SKW has the momentum, money, and is too big to fail easily. But they also have a LOT of exposure to brand-damaging accidents simply due to the size of their operations. That's probably aggravated industry wide by the low quality threshold for today's noobs combined with fast upgrades.