Thanks for the good laugh this morning!

Let’s war game this. United comes out with a policy saying they’re going to consolidate all UAX flying to their exclusive carriers.

Whiskey flies 64 RJ200’s with 500 pilots
CommuteAir flies 38 E145’s with <500 pilots
GoJet flies like 54 550’s with <600 pilots.

***For the sake of your fantasy argument, let’s say AA removes the remaining Mesa CRJ flying (which was just reduced and AA will probably take another 20 out soon) and UA offers Mesa a spot at the “exclusive UAX” table.***
So now..
Mesa flies 76 E175’s. (46 UA owned) with 1400 pilots
Mesa flies 20 RJ700s (these are going away 1:1 when the remaining 46 UA owned 175’s come online)

Republic flies 66 E175’s (13 UA owned) with 2500 pilots (Approx 30% of YX’s fleet)
SkyWest flies 90 175’s (25 UA owned but I think OO is taking ownership of these 25 as well) + 19 RJ700’s + 143 RJ200’s
... with 5300 pilots. (Approx. 30% of OO’s fleet not including the planes all leased out by SkyWest Inc. (550’s etc) )

Alsoooo SkyWest is still taking delivery of more than 100 E175’s over the next 2 years.

For historical info... About 18 months ago when UA kicked off 50 OO owned, they came back 2 months later begging to have them back, but by that time they were already contracted to AA.

**Now remember that SkyWest just bought all of the RJ550’s that GoJet/UA flies so SkyWest essentially owns GoJet’s entire fleet of 550’s

**Let’s also remember that UA/ManaAir still has not paid SkyWest $35 million for the sale of ExpressJet

**Let’s also remember that UA still has a multi-hundred million dollar loan outstanding with SkyWest Inc.


So now after all that.. let’s continue to wargame.
UA kicks YX and OO to the curb in order to consolidate all flying to UAX exclusive partners.

I can guarantee that SkyWest Inc. would take back every single 550 from G7 as a consequence for UA cutting all flying from OO.
This would immediately cause G7 to be out of business overnight with all 600 pilots on the street.
SkyWest Inc. would undoubtedly immediately call the $200+ million and $35 million debt of UA.

That leaves UA with a grand total of 64 200’s, 38 145’s, and 89 175’s with a combined 2400 pilots to fly their entire UAX system.
That’s 190 planes and 2400 pilots to cover all the UAX flying.

They would have removed 360 planes and 3500 pilots from their UAX System.

So.... I really doubt that UA is going to remove 65% of their UAX fleet to “consolidate”.