Jolly, answer me this. What is painted on the side of your airplane? What does the ticket say? How many gates does your company own? How about a marketing and strategic planning division? Does your company have route authority anywhere?

Face it, the regionals today are subcontractors. The routes they fly are owned by mainlines and subcontracted out. They fly them at the sole discretion of the mainline corporation.

It wasn't always that way. There were many independent regional airlines but they have either been absorbed, failed, or codeshared into subcontractordom. (OK, I made that word up).

So when Rhino says we are coming to get our jobs back, he is exactly right. The routes and seats belong to the mainline. It's time we brought them back. If you want to fly Delta Passengers in Delta airplanes, here is where you apply. Airline Applications