Originally Posted by
Flyby1206
Mainline companies used to operate small aircraft. What happened? They found out that it was too expensive to operate small aircraft on thin demand routes at mainline pay/benefits and still make a profit(competition). Instead of losing market share completely, they found a way to reduce total operating costs by subcontracting this flying, which in essence created a C-scale pay but the number of jobs grew. You can have mainline carriers operating small aircraft, but this will reduce the number of total jobs at all levels.
It is not as simple as charging $5 more for a ticket to cover costs.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. They found out they could subcontract it out to lower cost carriers and pocket the extra money and provide a return on investment for their shareholders. It wasn't too expensive to run it at mainline, it was just cheaper to do it with regionals, which left a higher profit margin for the CEO to show to shareholders... that does NOT change the fact that if regionals went away tomorrow, the flights would still be running, but it would be mainline pilots on the flightdecks.