Originally Posted by
Itsajob
My home town used to be served by a metroliner on an EAS route. That is long gone now and those people drive 2+ hours to a larger city to fly. The same arguments about not being able to serve a market with anything bigger than a 50 seat jet, are the same made by those who said that those same markets wouldn’t support anything bigger than 19 seats years ago. The market adapts. You may laugh at Kirby’s comments, but the entire 50 seat fleet is getting old, the customers don’t like them, and there isn’t a replacement. What do you suggest that they do? Look at this from a management or customer perspective, not someone who depends on those aircraft for a paycheck.
There is a difference between the 15 passengers a day that get on the 2 EAS flights driving 2 hours and the 150 people that get on the 4 50 seat flights a day driving, especially when they will still have delta and AA giving them the option to not drive. UAL is backed up against a scope wall. They can try and condense to bigger but if it doesn’t work with the customers they have other options.