To protect schedule integrity, possibly.

United isn't selling seats on any Gojet CRJ 550 flights right now. Even if the airplane got delivered tomorrow, United needs time to put them in to the system and sell seats. Network planning usually starts a year out and becomes final around 3-4 months out. Things like landing slots, gates, route capacity and pricing all has to be sorted out.

The first four are already in conversion at STL. It won’t take UA a year to get these in the system. They go through these seat changes for aircraft all the time. Currently, the 777s and 767s are getting new configurations and next up the A319/A320s will go through a small reconfiguration. I’ve been flying UA as a PAX for 15+ years and I can’t think of a time when at least one of their aircraft wasn’t being reconfigured.

Exactly. Which is why Skywest will continue to operate 700s because they are the only ones with an Aspen program and they won't give it away for free.

Source? Was in STL last week and didn't see anything like that going on at the hangar....also where did the 700s come from? Haven't heard anything about Gojet parking 4 700s....

N154GJ N157GJ N159GJ are currently in STL based on flightaware. N163GJ is in AMA based on flightaware.

N605QX is owned by SkyWest Leasing and flew TUS to AMA on Jun 12 and AMA to STL on Jun 19 under GoJet Flight Number 7554.

So it appears that C37afe is correct about the 29 CRJs from Skywest and JayD is correct about four in conversion in STL.

All QX tails were returned to the leaser. OO doesn’t own any of those. but appears they may have purchased it back... They were Horizon aircraft.

And Said 29 OO aircraft are all sitting in TUS with all the Engines off them... not even close to being ready for anyone...

Most of the aircraft to be converted are in TUS in various stages of storage. 605QX is S/N 10022. Some rocks aren't that old. A quick trip to faa.gov and use the "N" number search will verify the registered owner. My guess is that they all get NxxxGJ registrations.

The program to convert the CRJ 700 to the CRJ 550 is more than a remove and replace the interior. The airplane requires a whole new type certificate from the FAA before it can start flying. Before all of the aircraft certification criticism towards the FAA it was supposed to be finished last month. Now that the FAA is being blasted by the press, politicians and the internet for the MAX crashes the process is taking considerable longer with no firm completion date. They can repaint the outside and reconfigure the inside but the airplane can't fly until the FAA signs off on it.

Just because Flight Aware has them in STL doesn't mean they are going through conversion. That is TSHs main maintenance base and at any time there are several aircraft there going through routine maintenance.