Jetskipper

UA is currently capped out on 76-seat aircraft. UA would have to remove some EMB-175s to add reduced seat CRJ-900s.

CFIsoonToBeFO

United can never have a “wholly owned”. They tried that with Air Wisconsin in the early 90’s. That violates the Flight Attendant Contract and United lost all court battles and paid the FA’s a HUGE amount of $$$$ in court fines.

Hedley

You deal with the scope clause by letting Mesa figure out what to do with the -900’s. They aren’t UA’s problem. United just wants the 175’s staffed and Mesa has plenty of qualified pilots to fly them after a displacement bid.

klondike

There are only a handful of reasons that a company buys another airline.

1. To acquire its Operating Certificate……United already has one.
2. To acquire its fleet of airplanes….. United Airlines needs CRJ900’s like they need another hole in their head and they already own 30 of the -175’s Mesa is operating.
3. To acquire coveted gate space or landing slots at a specific airport….Mesa has none of those.
4. To merge with another outfit with the goal of consolidating business and dominating the rest of the industry….Mesa can’t help United here either.

No scenario exists where it would make any sense for United to buy Mesa Airlines.

A couple of more practical hurdles to consider:

1. Everybody is so wound up about United’s Scope issues. The simplest way around that is to reconfigure these airplanes down to 76 seats.
But…that being said, would it be profitable to fly them around with 76 seats?

2.. With a few exceptions here and there, most of Mesa’s most senior pilots are all on the -900.
IF the -900’s do end up going away, JO will be incurring a ton of training costs to transition all those pilots to the -175.

MasterOfPuppets

You would have to take them down to 50. United is MAXED on 70+seat jets. If United wants to add 40 900 they will need to park 40 E170/175 or Or 700s.

I just don’t see them doing that to give flying to an operation that can’t operated the nicer planes they are already supposed to fly for United.

klondike

Nobody at United Airlines, whether they be flight crew or management, is interested in spending even five minutes negotiating on scope relief to allow 20 year-old CRJ-900’s to fly somewhere in their system.

klondike

Okay then. I didn’t know that minor little detail.

Guppydriver95

Management not interested in scope relief? Where’s the spit coffee on my screen emoji?

amcnd

There are already 20’ish 175’s parked. Only way this works is if this is some super short term deal to fly 20- 900’s (because they have the staffing for them now) while they staff up the E175 that are parked, then bring back the 175’s. But that a ton of “bait and switch” for maybe a 6-8 month process..

topcat

Where are you getting this information?