Who else is currently flying them or already has the infrastructure in place to do it quickly? You would have to have a company that could almost do it overnight or a large portion of your turboprop flying out of EWR,CLE, and IAH will be unavailable for the summer. Unless they plan on dismantling the Pinnacle flying after the second quarter. Here fly your ass off for the summer and we will furlough you in the fall. I've heard this done at a certain carrier a few times before..............

CommutAir flies out of cle and ewr in the 200 and 300 versions for CAL. It is just a quick difference's course for the 400.

For the pilots.
Flight attendants have to be trained, evac done, training program approved...

It would be great if mainline take the flying back but if it goes to commute air then it will be at an even worse carrier. Our FO's make almost as much as their captains granted those are not rates for the 400. I am sure they will not be much more then what they have now.

Republic is currently winding down its Q400 ops. Probably not much trouble to crank it back up again.

... or the planes go overseas. My understanding (feel free to correct me) is that a lot of older US RJs are now flying in China.

Personally, I'd rather see a slight drop in frequency between city pairs and an upguage to mainline. A single A319/737 can replace 1 50 seater + 1 70 seater and the city pair remains ASM neutral.

There's a reason they are winding down their Q400 ops. Bedford doesn't want them. He didn't want them when they were making money for him. Just search the old Lynx threads.

I agree with your latter statement but I'm too cynical to believe it will actually happen. I don't believe the q400s are going to leave the Uninental operation.

Maybe PDT will get them. Unlikely. It's bitter sweet if we do. We'd like to get a new fleet, but not at the expense of another pilot group.

They will get a wavier. Everything else in the past where people said it couldn't be done, there is always a waiver to get around it.