Originally Posted by
Lighteningspeed
I don't think so. DAL said they want to park 100 CRJ200s in 2010. But there are no more CRJ900s to be added from anywhere. 76 seat RJ numbers are maxed out. Mesaba only has 17 CRJ200s whereas Pinnacle, Comair, SkyWest have many 50 seat RJs flying for DAL. I expect to see many CRJ200s phased out in the next couple of years. Some cities currently served by Saabs will be replaced with CRJ200s for the time being, so I'd say Pinnacle CRJ200 flying will be untouched for the time being.
However, RA said in an interview that he wants to keep most of the flying inhouse in the future, and that if he was in charge back when DAL sold ASA to SkyWest, he would not have signed such a long DCI contract with SkyWest, so if I had to take a guess, as DCI contracts expires, he will simply not renew them with third party DCIs.
Makes sense, so in the short term the wholly owned carriers (well Comair most likely) are screwed until the Skywest Inc./RAH/Mesa/Pinnacle contracts disappear.
Is it 100 CRJ-200s specifically? Or 100 50 seaters? Do the 20 ASA -200s leaving count in that total?
Will RA look to "code share" in the future to get around both long term contracts and scope? It might be an easy way for him to get 100 seaters on property through RAH. I hope it doesn't happen and I hope DALPA has protection against it.