That's two separate things that warrant a look.

I'm not comfortably familiar with the new PWA's ToC for LCA's. I heard there are improvements, but you may be correct in your implication that it should have been better. LCA's feel free to chime in with facts.

As for the regional LCA's arguement, I think its quite obvious that this is a very temporary bandaid...tourniquet to save the entire regional feed model from instantaneous collapse. We've all heard the stories of half a million(ish) per year regional LCA's and while that is a thing to some degree, its not typical even now, and it seems glaringly obvious that it won't sustain.

Its buying airlines minimum time to up-gauge, order mainline replacements and phase out or at least reduce regionals down to a more sustainable size. Eventually that size may be zero, but it seems at quick glance like half to a third of today's size will provide the needed relief. Major airline hiring will likely fall by half or more in the next year or three. That's not even including a severe recession or worse; we were always going to pare hiring after aproximately this year's 2K/yr. We haven't really come to grips with the coming recession, the banking collapse season or anything else like that.

Half a milly regional LCA's was something no one ever expected. It will be the stuff of crew van legends for eons. But I doubt it lasts. And I don't think many mainline LCA's would trade places with their regional counterparts.