Originally Posted by NuGuy

Heyas FtB,

Good analysis. What it comes down to is it costs real money to fly airplanes.

Everything seems fine when you are on an expense account or someone isn't minding the till. But when they do stop and realize the real costs of running the those things, the fun stops.

The "RJ Craze" started because of an unholy alliance of cheap labor, cheap operators, cheap fuel, complicit pilot groups and, at first, cheap airplanes. But like crack dealers "only the first one is free". The price of these operations steadily increased, but the mailine operators were "hooked", and that's how they wound up paying $25 mil a copy for a 50 seat jet, paying for the fuel (at $75/bbl), ground ops, reservations, AND providing a cost-plus contract, all the while trashing their core product

Be that as it may, I AM skeptical that a full blown RJ rewind is coming. There was multi-page article on this very thing in one of the trade journals...about how labor at CAL/UAL and AMR were aligning to end outsourcing, and how there were a lot of other challenges for the industry, but the way it was written, and its intended audience, it was clear it was a "wake up" piece for upper and middle managament. A "get out the vote" piece for management, if you will. If I can find it again, I will post it.

Nu