You should probably apply. Sounds like a great opportunity.

Personally, I'd love to see Skywest withdraw from United Express to pursue this.

they consider themselves major anyway.
flew with ex Skywest FOs that told me so

Not

koolaid works for some

As much as I dislike Skywest, anything is possible in this industry. Now is a great time to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves. I'm willing to wager Skywest pilots would be jumping up and down for the opportunity to fly larger mainline aircraft for much less pay.

This is coming from someone who less than a week ago said that 50 seat flying was stronger than ever on a Republic thread.

“Expressjet is still hiring and will be for the foreseeable future. 50 seat flying is stronger than ever.”

There is alway a place for a small 50 seat presence. I am presuming the lost 50 seaters would be Air Wis and Skywest. That is 170 frames. ExpressJet LR could go and keep the XR. That’s another 68. That would leave about 140 out of the current ~380. Presuming the 550 isn’t the first to be chopped.

everything I’m seeing is that travel will be severly stunted until a vaccine is found. No one will want to fly in the fall as the virus returns and risk infecting grandma. Pretty sure we won’t see a “robust” recovery until later next year.

50 seat jets do pretty darn well in a crushing economy like this. At some point soon, the CRJ550 will be converted to 76 seats and the CRJ 200 will be parked. Many opportunities will arise from the majors leaving markets and significantly reducing their capacity.

Only Kirby and a few others really know, but when he publicly says that the 50 seaters will mostly be gone, I’d guess that he means most of them. In the few articles that I have found talking about this, they all seem to be glad to see them go. One article even called it “a positive note”. I understand that people will be out of work if this does happen, but this was going to eventually play out. Companies like Air Wisconsin and Expressjet are flying an old aircraft with no available replacement that the customers don’t like. The 550 is also a 50 seat aircraft, but it is roomy and has dual class. My guess is that they are the last to go.

United is not going to subsidize a fee for departure arrangement with no passengers.

If they accept the bailout loan terms, they have to provide service to all the cities according to the govt rules. It's much cheaper running RJs than SNB or WBs.