As the airline industry has evolved over the last decade, we are seeing the trend of mainline airlines bringing their regional feed in-house once again. (Or as in-house as legally possible aka United)

American: Envoy, PSA, Peidmont
Delta: Endeavor
United: ExpressJet, CommutAir

Will we begin to see the slow death of the multi-carrier regional airline, such as Republic and SkyWest? Delta is rumored to be going to 3 regional carriers and United is now investing heavily in ExpressJet. Thoughts?

 

I guess you missed the news about GoJet and United.....


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United isn't investing heavily in XJT. They invested a small portion to have a little "ownership", but otherwise doesn't give a rats a$$ about any regional.

 

There is zero evidence that it’s trending this way. Who are the other two carriers delta is going to keep? Republic and Skywest.

It will always go to the cheapest bidder. Mainline will let their regionals reach near death and then they’ll make a move like we saw today with gojets. They’ll take from one and give to the other. This is how it will always be.

 

Contracts are mostly not going to the lowest bidder these days. It's going to whomever has the best performance at a price both parties can live with.

 

That’s not true. Republic should’ve been awarded delivery of the 25 175SC order then over ExpressJet if that were the case. Yet, instead, United gave it to an airline that was cancelling multiple flights per day due to lack of crews.

 

Trying to understand/predict the machinations mainline with the information available to your average line pilot is an exercise in insanity. There has to be an incredible along of backroom dealing going on.

 

It does seem there is going to be conslidation in the regionals. I think the "pilot shortage" is overblown. Flight schools are having no issue filling slots as pay has increased. That being said there is definitely a dicotomy between top tier regionals and the less desirable being able to fill classes. There will be consolidation to the bigger regionals that can garuntee mainline carriers they can staff their operations. As for Republic, they only operate the most desired equipment (E170/175's) and little known fact all of the big three have ownership in Republic. I have to think they are likely to be a survivor, and gain additional flying in the long run. Lastly, with classes essentially filled for the remainder of the year Republic can prove they can get enough pilots. Obviously, they are part of UAL's long term plans, but there was a post on LinkedIn from XJT advertising interviewing people this month for Feb. 2018 classes!

 

The trend is each major will have one or more WO or partially owned that are obviously single carrier. Plus two triple carrier mega regionals in Sky/Rep. Finally the remaining ones - all three TSA holdings, plus Mesa and Whiskey I think will be the wild card. They may trend to single carrier (mostly with UA), merge, or die. Hard to tell. Whiskey and GoJet were saved at the bell - so just when you think you have it figured out, you don’t.

So I’d say the trend is that there will be three catagories of regional. WO/Partial; Multi-Carrier mega regionals; and Other.

 

You are taking about an ExpressJet cattier that Skywest was slowly killing. Now that they are from underneath Skywest, I definitely see them improving from here on out.


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