If the entire XR fleet is taken care of by UAL, then I take your point. I don't know for sure either way. What was relayed to me was that there were planes we were unable to pay for. Perhaps those were the original LRs?
To be sure, the downward slide happened over a long period. But something clearly snapped around the December time frame. Anecdotally, we know that United told XJT there were getting the planes at the same time we cancelled a class in progress. And we must have seen it coming to cancel classes for Feb thru Apr. For reference, I saw the classes dropped from the schedule either the last week of January or the next week. The Monday after that is when 23 new hires got booted.