I see where the original post is coming from though, with market cap down to 18M today it would be relatively easy to shutter it and immediately (and unexpectedly right before Thanksgiving and Christmas). However, the others are right that United is dumping tens of millions of dollars into this venture (at least 100M this year alone) and it may be better to let them deal with it than to try to take about 80 airplanes off their capacity.

Additionally, whoever does it is gunna have a bunch of bad PR and everyone will be pointing fingers. This could be a situation where the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

American and Delta both paired up with Mesa at one point, and swore Mesa off as a result. They know UAL "has their hands full" with Mesa at the moment. Mesa is probably doing more financial harm to United by hanging around than going away, from a competitive standpoint.

Either United is expecting some kind of comeback Cinderella Story from Mesa, or United is keeping them afloat to use them as leverage against the other regionals down the road. Those are two of my guesses.

DAL's experiment was very short-lived, involved some Dash-8's (not Q400) in the Northeast.

Mesa won the bid, and then acquired planes out of a junkyard in Russia or someplace and tried to restore them to 121 standards. Problem was they didn't have TCAS or GPWS or something, and the mfg no longer made what they needed. After delays they finally started operations but the performance was so bad DL pulled the plug in very short order.

literally bought one Dash that was due to go on permanent static display at a museum or something

Why buy it when you can get it for pennies on the dollar in bankruptcy, and not be forced to do seniority list integrations.... everybody gets recycled as a new hire.

I was specifically referring to Freedom Airlines and the 145's for Delta. Did the 145's come out of Russia?