Continental sold off xjt but they have subsequently ruined that market for airlines like American and Delta who both tried to sell off Eagle and Comair and could not find a buyer. Maybe all the buyers actually paid attention to what happened to xjt. Unless the regional has a long term cpa that is flexible, profitable and guaranteed (like a certain % of regional feed) there will never be a sale of a wholly owned. ASA was sold to skywest under that scenario and i am pretty sure that delta would have rather kept it a wholly owned now in hindsight. There is so much pressure to keep costs down and the whipshawing is keeping negative pressure on pilot compensation and profit margins in the industry.

XJT was sold off and went from a high of 1850 flights a day to somewhere around 900 right now. Their original cpa was so restrictive that xjt couldnt bid on any other flying without ruining the profitable flying with CAL. Now we are the cheapest (cost per hour) 50 seat regional in the world and we arent making any money.

In the future i think the larger regionals will prevail. The majors want cheap and are going to force regionals to accept meager profit margins on the flying. The only real way to make money with such tight margins is going to be with economies of scale ( a lot of airplanes) or running a crappy operation. They might only be making a few bucks per flight but when you have 400 airframes all actively flying your expenses generally go down per airframe. I think SKW, Republic, Eagle, ... will survive along with the airlines who treat their employees and skimp on maintenance.