The whole picture at Mesa looks pretty darn awful. The 50-seaters could have been supplanted, but for JO and his Hawaiian vanity project that has literally bled cash from a company that had more than adequate cash reserves two years ago.

The court settlement dollars alone would have put Mesa into the SKW pay-for-play competition, and the monthly cash bleed from GO! operations would have allowed them to likely work out a deal for more 700s. But between bad/poor cash (and every other kind of) management hubris with respect to Go! and Kunpeng it seemed just a question of how fast they could throw good money after bad IMHO. The faster they could get rid of cash seemingly the better job they all thought they were doing.

And to the commenter up-thread who said that a little more maintenance would have helped... it would have, but no matter how hard we worked, every delay was the crew's fault and there was no winning. D-0 numbers in IAD were routinely ruined by rampers who could not effectively communicate, did not show up to push on time or a galaxy of other things. Somehow when I would go in and out of ORD none of the issues in IAD ever seemed to surface with the same regularity, and the D-0 numbers routinely seemed to be better.

If UA were to somehow re-award 200 flying back to Mesa, which I think is unlikely, then it would probably be for even less money or as a stop-gap month-to-month sort of deal when they had high demand (holiday travel) and would be profitable for UA but not for Mesa. I think that Skywest and Republic will soon rule the regional universe because they don't seem to make questionable decisions and have an actual business plan.