Aw, come on Newty! Didn't you take the FO's Oath? ;)

I had my fingers crossed

Me too....

Not really... podunkians will fly another carrier who has RJ's and a cheap price and UA/CAL may get hammered in many mid size markets. That's the rub. Bring RJ's less that 70 seats "in-house" and everyone else will have a competative advantage.

That's why I predict UA/CAL will cave on 66 seat scope. The senior guys will get a nice raise and throw everyone trying to make it up the ladder under the bus.

SkyW doubled down on their RJ bet by buying Xjet (and ASA for that matter) and their share price keeps rising. I wounder what the insiders already know... hmmm???

Sorry about the tread-jacking.. as you were...

I see it a different way mushroom. Most of these Podunk towns are not served with 700's or 170's, rather by 50 seaters. The bigger rj's are used between major cities which doesnt make sense to me.

I predict 50+ seat rj's to come in house eventually and 50 seaters left alone. My guess for skywest buying xjt is they were cheap with guaranteed contracts.

It makes sense at one level: frequency

Vacation travelers are flexible and might be happy with one daily option, but the business and premium travelers who are the bread-and-butter of hub-and-spoke will not tolerate a five hour hub sit to make their connection. Airport appreciation is for crews only, not customers.

Even though larger planes are more economical per seat, passengers prefer five or six daily flights rather than one or two. That, combined with lower wages for RJ crews, helps to tip the scales.

Until congestion and/or fuel prices force the airlines to move to fewer, larger airplanes, they will follow market demand. A mainline pilot group which brings RJ's in-house and then charges narrow-body wages to fly them might very well wind up non-competitive.

I'm sorry, but you're going to tell me that even if they got $100 more per hour EACH, it would make them noncompetitive? Take a two-ish hour flight from EWR-ORD. You're telling me that the difference between profitable and uprofitable is $400? [EDIT: PROFANITY REMOVED]. That's a little over $5 a seat on a 76-seat RJ.. Take that raise down to something resembling the difference between your average RJ rate and what, say, united airbus crews make and it's laughable.

If $1.50 a ticket is the difference between your airline being profitable and failing, you're running it wrong. Period.

Just for reference, does anybody remember that documentary a news reporter did about an average AA flight? Does anybody remember that, at the end, AA only made like $500 on the flight? So yes, $400 would make a difference, unfortunately.

Raise ticket prices a few dollars:confused:

That would be too easy and passengers wouldn't notice or care, instead, charge em a 10$ fee for a seat cushion, and 5 dollars for overhead bin usage.