There are some really interesting thoughts in this thread. I agree we'll probably never know the real reasons for the 175s going away, but it is frustrating to not know why, especially after such a great effort by so many here to stand up that fleet.

I wanted to add one thing regarding UA making the decision to put in that 49% stake. What are the chances UA mgmt was concerned about certain regional airlines getting so large, with so much market share, that they'd have too much bargaining power? I'd be interested to hear the group's thoughts.

Be well all.

I will say your theory isn’t far fetched. In 2018, RPA wanted to purchase Compass. But TSA, was only willing to sell if RPA bought all 3 (GoJet, TSA, and Compass). They were closing in on a deal when RPAs shareholders (DL, UA, AA) pulled the plug. Rumor had it they did bc they didnt want a regional having that much power and it would take away several companies bidding against each other. I think they would prefer a company go out of business than merger.

Even if the truth does come out and it will - the white noise that has already been offered as possible explanations will drown out the actual story.

My confidence in our new CEO never got established. In hindsight, I will say that his failure to recognize the significance of the attrition due to the merger engineered by a competitor (Skywest) coupled with his failure to see Mesa out-maneuvering him with the next 20 175s has led us to where we are today.

Plenty has been written about the merger and attrition. He inherited that but he never showed an understanding of it until it was too late. We only got the new TA when we had already lost the 175s
As to the 175s, he apparently didn't see JO coming in and off-loading UALs financial burden by offering those next 20 175s instead of UAL having to finance them. I have to give JO credit for what he did. Pretty shrewd move on his part. Unfortunately, it led to what we have now and our CEO didn't see it coming.

^^^Exactly^^^

I have to wonder if JO can afford those planes now? I think not?

Ultimately it doesn't matter to us. Our 175s are already being transferred to Skywest. We will not be flying them at this point.

The planes have already been purchased and shipment starts in Sep.

XJT could not staff all 25 E175s. According to communications provided to UA in early February, the last 4 aircraft in the delivery could not be flown. Came up short.

I do believe however, that if UA had known the full extent of how this crisis would develop, they’d have just agreed to leaving them on the ramp at the time. Since that’s essentially where they ended up. I’m assuming that UAs motive was to keep all of them flying without any delay in utilization since the clock was turning on the manufacturer provided support.

Guaranteed OO agreed to fly them but only under the conditions that all 25 were transferred to their network. It was just.....good business.

That seems a bit odd since we had a ton of staffing on the 175 new FOs i talked to were barely flying. I know at some points we had to wait on go jet 700s to leave before we could run revenue flights on some of the 175s.