Ohh the flowthrough is such a mess and is now going to arbitration, which wont be good for anyone. I would expect maybe 100-200 AE guys will actually get an opportunity to go if that.

On a more dismal note, I would expect most of the AE flying to be segmented out and sold in the next 4 years. After 4 years I would expect AE to be primarily a ORD and DFW based carrier flying 25 CRJ700s and a few 50 seat 145s. Saabs will be sold, ERJ135/140s will be sold back to Embraer for conversion to legacy jets, Executive will be sold, maybe to Spirit or Jetblue or some carrier trying to make a presence in the Caribbean. Skywest and/or Xjet will do the flying out of LAX, CHQ/Skyw will take a chunk of ORD flying, ASA might get some DFW routes, Air Wisky gets a bunch of East coast RDU/LGA flying.

What makes me think this? AE has a no strike clause that ends in 2012. At that point they will have a top heavy seniority list and be flying very outdated equipment. In order to make AE a competitive carrier someone would have to invest a huge chunk of money in new a/c and somehow get the top 1500 pilots out of the company. Instead of investing all that cash AMR has chosen to sell AE (probably as an IPO), and contract out other regionals to do the flying so that they dont have all their eggs in one basket (think Comair/Delta).