I don't disagree with you about trying to create mainline jobs. Truth of the matter is that the regionals airlines are here to stay. I doubt that United Airlines is interested in sending a 737 from Denver to Farmington, NM that only has 25 people aboard.

Hmmm. In that case, maybe Farmington shouldn't be served at all since a half full RJ loses a lot of money on the flight. But I guess the commuter airline is fine with it because they get paid for every seat anyway.

This does not matter for 2 reasons

1) People do not have a "mainline" option for most places regionals fly. Look at you and Colgan. If someone wants to fly to CLL, LFT, AEX, ACT...etc they have 2 choices, a regional or drive.

2) If the city is served by mainline and a regional (XJet and CAL for example) people will always pick a flight that has the lowest cost and the flight the benefits their schedule best.

Almost every passenger would book on whatever gets them there the cheapest and in the shortest time...period!

completely worthless and we pay these morons with our tax money because???

Isn't this already a DOT or IATA requirement to list the operating carrier on the ticket?

Of course this law would really hurt priceline and hotwire where you buy without knowing what you're getting.

totally do not understand how this protects the travelling public... if it is to shield them from dangerous regionals.... tell me which mainline has never had an accident? (i'm sure someone is going to name one, but you get my point. and even then you'd have to take into account how long they've been in business because it's not fair to compare a 5 year old airlinee without a single accident, as opposed to a 20 year airline with one accident.)
and, regionals do make up more than 50% of all the flying... so unless people are travelling from hub to hub, how would they plan on ever avoiding a regional aircraft? (and even hub to hub is often flown by regionals with larger aircraft like RAH.) i cant believe this chuck is serving my beloved home state, he could be spending his time on a gazillion other things that matter.

Nice Avatar :D

JAPW
Ally

the public will only care about how much they pay for the tickets!!! This lady on our flight decided to fly to dallas and connect in columbus from la guardia to save $20. We were delayed for weather and had to sit for 3hrs on the ground. Did she not only miss her connection, but she had to pay for her own hotel for the night. Just to save $20. awesome....

Ha Ha!!! I'll bet she brought her own trail mix on board too!

1. Agreed.
2. IAH to ATL on 7/28 has 10 non stop flights. All are $69 one way. Six of them are flown by CO, the other four are flown by two competing regionals. I would rather have two more 73s eliminating the RJs: fewer crews, but the remaining jobs are much better.