Originally Posted by
CaptainNameless
No. Not assuming SKW will be part of the merger at all. The point is, Skywest pilots WILL be subject to the SKW Inc. total fleet (ASA+XJT+SKW+yet-to-be named-acquisitions) being completely reshuffled among the new/old United hubs in a way that may not be what Skywest pilots have in mind about how they hope the future unfolds. The point is, unless I am missing something, the total Inc. fleet will be allocated as Inc. intends in order to service the new merged United, and that could be a very different future than the present picture. Skywest Airlines is a part of that fleet plan merger or not. That's all. 10 year CPA doesn't stipulate where any of those airplanes will be operated. Could be anywhere in the United system where United wants them, so the comment is regarding the most logical placement of the RJ fleet in terms of aircraft seating capacity. Higher capacity hubs=bigger airplanes. Lower capacity hubs=smaller airplanes. More like 2-3 years, not 10 years down the road.
You have to take into consideration that where we are based at SkyWest plays only somewhat on where we actually fly. A large number of the four day trips leave the domicile on the first leg and don't come back till the last. You have ORD crews doing California flying, SLC crews spending the entire trip in MSP and so on. Even when we were doing hub stuff for Delta out of DFW years ago we never opened a base, lots of aircraft and crews just going down there four days at a time. Same thing with ATL, even though we had a domicile there for a while, most of the flying was being done by SLC crews. SFO and LAX have only been domiciles for two years, yet we've been flying RJs in and out for over 10. The same thing could happen with any shift of the 700s for United/CAL.