Many things go into a decision to award flying. Delta is trying to shift some flying back to the mainline. They are reducing the overall number of connection aircraft. From a pilot standpoint losing 2 50 seaters to one 90 seater is a bad deal. Jobs are lost. From a management standpoint its the plan for the future. Performance is still the key factor in who long term gets the flying. The one airline that has really made out well in this has always done a good job. One thing Delta tracks is the number of passengers a airline causes to misconnect. This is a key stat. A misconnect is very very expensive to the airline. ASA was last in this statistic prior to their sale and Comair was a close runner up. If Comair had been the top performing regionial in the Delta system the last 4 years the fleet makeup and size would be very different there. Delta would have also benefited since they own Comair and the value of their asset would have been way up. They would prefer to award the flying to Comair. They can't afford to do it if they are not going to get the passenger to their connecting flights.