Originally Posted by
JetBlast77
One thing a lot of people don't realize with Branded is there is not a lot they could have done. CAL came to XJT and exercised their right to remove the first 69 aircraft. If XJT would not have kept them, CAL planned to give them all to CHQ and other providers and to continue to remove 69 aircraft until ExpressJet was no more. Ream HAD to keep the aircraft and do something, anything, with them to keep this from happening. Yes, they lost a ton of money with branded but it was either that or go TU a few years later.
Plus Branded wasn't the total disaster many people made it out to be. Fuel costs killed it plus the fact that there was probably pressure from Continental (we were using their airplanes, after all). The last month of flying was also the most popular with something like +80% load factors. Ticket prices were steadily climbing too.
Being from California I got to hear a lot about what people thought about ExpressJet and it was nothing but positives. Word of mouth was just beginning to get serious momentum about the same time they were forced to shut it down. Would it have really had a chance if fuel stayed low? Hard to say, but just saying the product bombed is not really telling the whole story.