Option four: something like Moxie or Amazon Prime Express selling tickets online and running 80-130 seat aircraft that steal the medium city market away from the biggies.

How is Sears Roebucks' catalogue business doing against Amazon? Or individual video stores against Netflix?

Leave a market untapped or even underserved for very long and some one will find a way to take that market away from you.

I love it when the RAA says smaller communities will lose their service due to the pilot shortage. If there is money to be made in Podunk Falls, the service will continue. The minute it is not profitable, service will cease to exist, and efforts to utilize resources will be concentrated on routes that are profitable.

You can't replace airliners, professional crews, mx, support infrastructure, etc. with an app.

Ticket sales have already migrated to the digital realm.

The only money to be made in startups is to leverage low labor longevity, and hope you can sell the thing off before unions, labor longevity, and economy of scale catch up with you. Airline startups have an abysmal success rate.

Genius entrepreneurs who think they can do it better come and go, there's been a steady parade of them for decades.

Oh, I'm well aware of the old joke:

Q: What's the fastest way to become a millionaire?

A: Be a billionaire and buy an airline.

;)

But notwithstanding that, entrepreneurship is not altogether dead. You MAY be right, but that doesn't mean someone might not try it - or even be nimble enough to make it work. Time will tell.
And if those 60 C-series (whoops, Airbus 220) orders become actual aircraft, it will at least make an interesting little footnote in Air Transport history.

When the regionals fall apart, mainlines will still have to fly the small jets if they want to keep their market share, and anti-trust immunity. Unless they can get the government to change small jet policy, but in 30+ years, they haven't made progress.

The only "small jet" policy which applies is the majors don't want to pay mainline wages and benefits to people flying RJ's (< 100 seats). This has been a consistent theme for many years, and I actually believe them when they say it would not be economical... they've consistently put their money where their mouth is on that.

Bear in mind that all or essentially all labor agreements are structured so the junior-most CA gets paid more than the senior-most FO. They don't want to pay a 50 seat CA more than a widebody FO :eek: At some price point, most pax will drive or take a bus to a larger town... there are few places in the lower 48 where a 2-6 hour drive would not get you to a mid-size town with narrow-body service.

If the problem is a pilot shortage, then mainline won't have to worry about competition filling a vacuum (except EAS, which is not "competition").

In the past there has been a theory that regional flying can be operated at a loss if it fills mainline seats... that has been proven to be unreliable formula for success, in general RJ flying needs to operate in the black on it's own.

That's true, and several other reasons, for why RJ flying is off the mainline list. Keep in mind however, mainline is flying a massive amount of routes with mainline aircraft in slots that are allocated to RJs. Subsequently, the RJs are flying elsewhere in the system. If mainline gets rid of the RJs, those slots then go up for bid to other airlines. It's usually the RJs that get canceled when bad weather starts restricting traffic. Mainline simply can't give up the RJs, they have to operate them at mainline eventually.

Slots are important at the hub, but no shortage in Podunk Falls. Some hub slots would be used for expanded NB service, but you're right they would need to get creative to hang on to most of them.

But bringing flying in house is permanent... they'll try everything else first. The good thing about regionals is they can always pay them now if need be and then COMAIR them later when the labor market is more favorable.

Why did ALPA never do anything to prevent Legacy’s from the whipsaw. Maybe a regional senority list so you don’t lose 20 years when they give away your flying to the lowest bidder for saying no to a crappy contract.

I could understand if regionals were small but they are 20k plus Pilots.

I think its been laid out pretty clear that mainline ALPA is 100% senior. They dont give a **** about their own people below their collective seniority level. They dont give a **** that they outsourced their own peoples flying. All they cared about was their bonuses and money. What makes you think they give a flying **** about anyone getting stuck flying a regional jet for decades?