i would categorize a staple as mainline cleaning up the mess.

making the model work without regional feed is an enormous problem… i agree. That does not make LCA’s and Captains grow on trees.

the fundamental issue here is whether a FFD model is cheaper than all-mainline. (Short-term or long-term may be different answers). Mainline will use regionals until they stop saving money.

IIRC the current APA contract has crj900 rates. Maybe they bring it in house.

A WO merger might have worked 5 years ago. They don’t have time to pull it off now. Three unions, three types, a half dozen bases … that will take a couple years to integrate and it doesn’t change the three-week half-life of an LCA

Edit: regarding pay and attrition. There’s some pilot-pay tipping point where mainline makes more sense. Idk where that is but probably much higher than what you need to keep people from leaving for mainline