That is incorrect. ExpressJet Airlines, Inc. is a separate corporation with shares that are privately held by SkyWest Inc. Same goes for SkyWest Airlines, Inc. Another corporation held by SkyWest Inc. They can sell off an equity stake in ExpressJet without having to purchase a stake in SkyWest Inc or SkyWest Airlines Inc.

VX would have taken longer with VX management... conventional wisdom is a lot longer, but AS (and the pilots) wanted to move the merger right along rather than risk a L-USA catastrophe.

It is very abnormal for subsidiaries of public companies to be considered privately held.
If you can bring something to the table I’m ready to learn something about
Skyw.
Otherwise selling a portion of xjet to ual would dilute current shareholders. (Not happening)
Ual could buy a share in exjet if it is spun off from the SKYW ticker and current skyw shareholders given an equity stake.
Or divesting would be an option for UAL. BUT if they don’t want to own a majority they would need someone else to buy 51%. (Probably Commutair).

Any examples of what you speak?

A public company has shares on the open market. A private company still has shares/ownership, which may be owned by one or more private parties. Said private parties can generally make deals on their own, unless it's illegal or it's large enough to get the attention of the trustbusters at DOJ.

Inc can sell off a worn-out timed out CRJ 200 if it wants to. The BOD (elected by shareholders) provides oversight on behalf of shareholders.

Inc can also sell off other assets, such as part or all of XJT. Shareholders shouldn't be diluted, the value of their stock simply shifts from equity in XJT to cash (which can be retained, used for growth/aquisition/expenses, or distributed to shareholders). The BOD should provide oversight to ensure the shareholders didn't get a bad deal. Not all shareholders may agree on any particular transaction. If enough of them are unhappy, they can replace member(s) of the BOD to try to get what they want.

Dilution... I'm not sure you understand what that means. The only way Inc's shares can be diluted is if they issue have another issuance of Inc's stock or Inc's employees exercise options causing the number of outstanding shares to increase. Therefore decreasing the earnings per share and giving each shareholder a smaller slice of the pie. Inc holds shares of the ExpressJet Airlines Inc corporation and the SkyWest Airlines Inc corporation as the holding company. They can sell a percentage of those shares to United. It's as simple as that. Those shares are not publicly traded. It's private equity by a publicly traded company.

I thought for a second to add "essentially" before the word diluted, but wrongly guessed you'd understand.
Selling 40% of ExpressJet would decrease earnings.

So please back to what you originally disagreed with. Provide proof of this extremely rare thing you speak of.
Skyw surely would have to tell share holders that they don't actually hold shares in the airlines because they are private.

Again.
If UAL wants partial ownership or full ownership of express jet, we are talking divesture, or maybe possibly a spin off from INC.

When an investor acquired shares of SKYW “SkyWest Inc” they are purchasing shares of a holding company who owns 2 airlines. When you say “Skyw surely would have to tell share holders that they don't actually hold shares in the airlines because they are private.” They do disclosure this relationship in their SEC filings. There are three separate corporations here with three articles of incorporation, three sets of corporate bylaws. The stock certificates will each have their respective entity name on it. When you say “Selling 40% of ExpressJet would decrease earnings. “ well that would be true if ExpressJet were profitable. But it’s not. Hence the reason the stock price went UP seconds after the articles were published. Because it’s favorable. The end of the day all that matters is profit to the shareholders. Wipe out a losing entity and that’s a good thing.

But who really knows what’s going to happen, if anything materializes at all. And yes you are correct in the airline sector this is rare. Most regionals are privately held as it is. Spinoffs are not extremely rare in the overall market. In fact something is happening everyday somewhere.

https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/own-disp?action=getissuer&CIK=0000793733

For anyone not following... just read this https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/holdingcompany.asp

They do a nice job of summing everything up.

With the Expressjet ties to UAL, I'm super glad we are not ALPA!