Originally Posted by
captchris
Take 10 mins to listen to the beginning of this call. JO is crazy. Talking about how much he is going to grow this Chinese operation including 90 seat RJ's.
Talks about fleet reductions (CRJ-200's, B-1900's), growth in China, etc.
Why is that crazy? In just about every area of commerce China is or certainly will become the largest market in the world. There is no reason to believe that's not true in aviation as well. Ask Airbus why they're planning to build planes in China and why Boeing is at least having China build major portions of their aircraft as well. For Mesa, as a corporation, to want to be in on the early end of that business and to grow the business rapidly is, in my opinion a smart business decision.
The EAS market is dead or dieing. The subsidy doesn't get close to covering the costs and people won't pay real money for a seat on the plane ("why should I pay $300 for a 30 minute flght when I pay $75 to fly SouthWest?"). The hate filled editorials from USA Today don't help. Cutting the losses at Air MidWest is a smart business decision. If, and it's a big if, EAS ever looks like being a good business again, you just fire up a certificate and go and fly it.
If the company is to be believed the 200's at United are flying at slim to no margins, and the company couldn't staff them anyway. So making them go away to be replaced by 700's which, if the company is to be believed, fly at much better margins AND on a 10 year contract is a smart business decision.
Many of these decisions SUCK for the pilot workforce, but Mesa is not in the business of making it's pilot happy (as anyone who works there can attest). I would be the last to argue that Mesa is a brilliantly run business machine, but just because YOU don't like the decisions they make doesn't make them, ipso facto, bad decisions.