You say this like it's a bad thing...

To be honest, that is the best news in a long time for a lot of folks hoping to have a career in this industry. We don't want careers at dead end contract carriers.

If mainline wants this flying, let them have it. It'll be good for everyone.

I really believe this.

I used to fly for ACA. We had 87 CRJ 200s and owned all the UAX flying out of IAD. Morale was high, pay was pretty good and our operating stats were top notch. Then UAL decided we were making too much as a company and pulled our contract in bankruptcy court. In case you weren't watching, Indy shut it's doors 18 months later after going through a $350M nest egg of UAL money. It was fun but the resulting unemployment for 1600 pilots was pretty painful.

Don't take anything for granted in this business. Good luck, with fuel this high every flight a 50 seater makes is a financial loss. Just sayin...

What did Ernie Gann say about them? I'm a big fan of his work.

Somehow, I don't see mainline management being willing to give up such a powerful cost savings tool they have: underpaid pilots? flexible commitments? whipsaw? someone else holding the debt?

It's management's dream come true.

Very eerie.....

FWIW, I think any airline that does the majority of the lift out of one (flow prone) hub is more vulnerable to bad stats. XJT in EWR, SKW in SFO, etc. Thats my take anyway, bad weather passing through a hub will cripple the rest of the operation.

An operator like RAH that has 6 sets of different colored planes flying around which creates 6 independent systems that only overlap where spares (in RAH paint) are concerned. It makes them much less prone to the aforementioned hub syndrome. Its not really a commentary on the quality of anybody's operation, just my take on the logistics of it all.

Yup. DALPA has their stance. I wonder what will happen come next negotiations and they can either have a big raise with less/same scope, or less scope and no raise...

Any return of flying to mainline has to be won in negotiations. The flying is not going to magically reappear. Let's hope United/Cont. set the bar high.

You know why they call themselves UCAL, because it sounds better than UCON. Yep they are looking at a East/West US Airways scenario.

It's not like ASA/Skywest doesn't have any money. If staffing/performance/pay mattered at all to keep contracts they would fix it. They obviously either don't care because they're confident that we'll keep the flying, or (more likely) they are expecting to shrink the airline a bit and fix staffing issues that way.