I think republic and SKW may be headed in two fundamentally different directions...

SKW: Staying focused on traditional regional feed on the assumption that there will always be a market for that, although the contract fundamentals will be different going forward (more risk for the regional). If there continues to be a feed market, then SKW is well-positioned based on their size and finances, which gives them good economy-of-scale efficiencies and enough cash to avoid getting forced into a money-losing deal to keep airplanes flying.

RAH: Seems like they are operating under the assumption that the regional business model is toast and they need to position themselves to move into the real airline business. They hope to succeed by bringing regional pay and benefits (ie little and none) to larger airplanes, perhaps with a small override. Or maybe they just have a leader with an ego problem, and he wants to be the next Juan Trip (ala JO)...you never know with the owner-operator types.

The SKW approach assumes that 50-70 seaters will always be needed, at least to serve smaller towns...which is probably true. The government might get away with dropping EAS to a few one-stop-sign towns, but if cities with 100,000+ population start losing airline service the political pressure will mount.

The flip-side would be a scenario where mainline does away with small jets to focus on large cities/international, or scopes them in-house. This might happen if fuel gets ridiculously expensive or if mainline pilots unite (unlikely, cuz no one group could do it alone...they would scope themselves out of business).