Initially Envoy was given a choice between Canadian flying and Caribbean and chose Canada. There was an initial reluctance to have the Envoy 175s EOW certified. It was a dollar consideration, both the initial act and continued cost of equipping and maintaining the life vests as well as the slight weight penalty. The Envoy planes are nearly all EOW equipped after initially just doing 20. I don’t think the 170s have the EOW equipment, but those planes were intended to fly out of ORD. The move of RPA out of MIA was just another shell game of regional flying by AAG. RPA’s presence has increased at ORD and in the NE. Envoy lost NY and was beefed up in MIA.

You are right, nobody can really afford to take on MORE flying. It will be a matter of who shrinks the least and where their flying remains.

But as I said, as things shrink, you can expect to see changes. It’s my bet that closing MIA as an Envoy base would be likely if it were to lose all the 145s without a considerable amount of 170/175s to replace them and their flying. While that has always been the desire, a significant number of additional 175s isn’t something that appears to be happening anytime soon.