Originally Posted by
cornerpocket
American and Delta both paired up with Mesa at one point, and swore Mesa off as a result. They know UAL "has their hands full" with Mesa at the moment. Mesa is probably doing more financial harm to United by hanging around than going away, from a competitive standpoint.
Either United is expecting some kind of comeback Cinderella Story from Mesa, or United is keeping them afloat to use them as leverage against the other regionals down the road. Those are two of my guesses.
DAL's experiment was very short-lived, involved some Dash-8's (not Q400) in the Northeast.
Mesa won the bid, and then acquired planes out of a junkyard in Russia or someplace and tried to restore them to 121 standards. Problem was they didn't have TCAS or GPWS or something, and the mfg no longer made what they needed. After delays they finally started operations but the performance was so bad DL pulled the plug in very short order.