Much of what you say is true. But there will always be people willing to stay at the smaller carriers because they develop the quality of life they desire through seniority. There may be small variations in the percentages of those that want to do this at a given carrier and true Skywest does have the largest TOTAL number of those people, but probably not a significantly larger percentage. There is, however, an economy of scale that does favor larger carriers and AAG has in the past few years, even before the pandemic, stated their plan and followed through with that plan, of fewer smaller carriers and instead have a few larger carriers. Skywest is certainly the biggest and I don’t doubt that it will survive, especially because it flies for all four major carriers. I don’t doubt that there will be some consolation, just like has happened with the majors over the years. The strong survive and the others either are merged and consumed or just fade away.

Whether or not you intended it to be an argument FOR the survival of the regionals, it is. A few, smaller, carriers will fail to be sustainable and the majors will realize they have to spend more money to keep things going. It may require more investment directly in the regionals and those regionals being wholly owned, or more “mega regionals” similar to Skywest. I still contend that the regional model will still survive because even at a higher price point, it is well below what that smaller gauge feed can be operated by mainline.