Originally Posted by
AAflyer
What if the original intent of the RJ was to slowly whittle away at the SCOPE clauses of major airlines.. Airline management and the ATA could have been setting this up for a while.. Certainly a short term loss with the RJs would be windfall if they could eventually re-tool "regional" airlines with legacy size aircraft.
Don't you find it interesting that airline management teams, and the ATA refer to the E-190 as a "regional" aircraft.
Things that make you go hmmmm.
AA
Then it makes the decision to give "regional jet" scope away back in the early 90s look even dumber, doesn't it?
FWIW, I don't give airline management or the ATA enough credit to think in such a long-term way...but I do think aircraft manufacturers discovered and fully exploited a niche between the cultures of commuter and legacy airlines with a class of aircraft that made it easy for uber-reactive airline management to do the same thing. It was a marketing stroke of genius.
Too bad pilots were the only ones left scratching their hind parts in all this...