True. Of course the key word is "if". Since you seem to know something about accounting, you can understand how being able to control and consolidate costs can be advantageous to a corporation. When working with a feeder airline, the costs of the employees, training, maintenance, facilities, aircraft and so forth are about about the same. If the feeder airline is independent, then it's management and investors want to make a profit. Otherwise they'd do like Midwest did and sell out in order to go into another business.

Consolidating purchases of consumables, sharing gates, training facilities, management, etc. assists the bottom line. While it does involve more work to operate a second airline, the profit margin makes it worth the effort.

Don't believe me? Look at the results. If Eagle wasn't worth the effort, we'd have been gone yesterday. While it is true AMR has tried to sell us or portions of us in the past, this has more to do with Scope clause restrictions than a pure business decision. The last time AMR was close to selling Eagle it's rumored that the buyer balked at all the strings which were attached to the deal.