Originally Posted by rickair7777

AS has regional feed, which can help with the flyover states. In a hypothetical merger the unions would have to consider whether it might be in everyone's best interest to allow *proportional* growth of the RJ feed to help flesh out the lower density states.

While there was some hope that the regionals would fail and it would all go in-house, the legacies bent over backwards to keep them on life support for better days, so low cost outsourced feed is just a business reality in the competitive landscape going forward.