Express on it's own ticket
 

People have said here a time or two that ExpressJet would like to operate on it's own and not as a regional contracting to other airlines. What would it take for this to happen?

It is going to happen. However they will still fly for COA.

It would be a tough road not flying for coa anymore. Look at Indy/ACA.

The fundamental problem here is that RJ's are inefficient compared to mainline aircraft. Their only chance would be to selectively cherry-pick a number of small city-pairs which don't have enough pax to justify mainline service.

Totally different than FLYI. We still have a guaranteed profit from CAL for years to come to supplement anything we do. We have Charter ops which is very busy right now and the Branded flying is going to happen. Indy went full balls to the wall on its own. We have revenue from a number of arenas to help us in this effort. We will See.

Not to mention we have economies of scale. It would take less per seat to turn a profit as we can spread the cost out over other operations.

Indy was forced to go balls to the wall on it's own. Or they could have ended up like AWAC and gotten kicked to curb. And I seriously doubt they would have been able to buy anybodys flying back in 2004. Even with over 400 million dollars in the bank and a healthy balance sheet.

The only thing XJT has in common with Flyi is the aircraft size:

As mentioned before we have a guaranteed revenue stream from CAL and from our charter.

We also have the infrastructure already in place to support the maintenance and operations.

We are not in direct competition with anyone, as we will be flying out of medium to small markets which are currently underserved.

The XR is lot more efficient than a CRJ-200.

Less than a quarter of our fleet will be dedicated to this venture (at first).

If a market is successful enough, who is to say we won't upgrade it to bigger equipment. After all we do have 100 pending options with Embraer, which can be converted from XR's.

Do I need to keep going? Different ball game people, different ball game!

About 3-4 months... Its basically a done deal. It WILL happen.

And anyone that compares us to Indy Air just needs to read Sanchez's post. Its right on. The only thing I would add is that Jim Ream has said that the only way we would get bigger airplanes is if someone else pays for them (like another mainline partner). Our economy of scale on the 145s is just too good right now.

By "efficient", what trait are you referring to? Can you prove it?

Well whats normal fuel burn on a CRJ-200 at .74M FL360 and a full boat (50 pax, 65 bags and 12000lbs of gas)? For the XR its about 2400lbs/hr.