Yeah Right let the mesa Go pilots fly planes on a national list no way not after what they did to Aloha. No way no how.

Again, I had mentioned this already. There are two separate things we are talking about here. The national seniority list, which I would agree is harder to envision working with the possibilities that exist today but which the benefits still outweigh the negatives enough to cautiously pursue it. The seniority migration is a different deal and its something that is just within the fee for departure part of the industry. The key is to make it so appealing that everyone will want or for all practical purposes have to have it. Or at least make it like insurance where you don't want to pay for it but you know its good to have just in case. What this is is the ability to take your seniority with you if your company loses its aircraft to another company, such as what is happening with the DCI carriers (by the way, the Canadians are not the only ones that have this, ASA has this language in their contract as well). Sure, it would be part of the contract and therefore subject to section 1113 of chapter 11 of the bankruptcy court. But to use your example of DCI carriers, Delta nor any of its DCI carriers are in chapter 11 and therefore wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Bankruptcy for an airline is not something that is done lightly and therefore are isolated. And even if an airline does file bankruptcy, it doesn't mean that they can automatically change anything in a contract. They have to file a petition to do so and convince the judge that what they want to do is necesary. Even with the last round of bankruptcies, there were NO section 1113 petitions. I know you don't like to hear it but ALPA is working on making it harder for companies to do this. But that is no reason why not to go ahead and do what the Fee for Departure Work Group is trying to do. This is a matter of a whole bargaining cycle for it to fully succeed. We are talking years not months. In the meantime, ALPA with the help of a more union friendly administration and congress will work on strengthening union's position in bankruptcy court.

The bottom line is that given your legitimate concerns, I feel the benefits far outweigh the improbable concerns. I hope that answers your question even if its not to your satisfaction.

That's right, Mesa destroys major airlines with our fleet of 5 CRJ-200's.

Next in our crosshairs, SWA.

Don't you work for the union-less Lynx?

You're assuming that a jet is a jet is a jet as far all this goes and therefore costs the same. That's not true. The differences are all over the place. From how the aircraft are financed, personnel costs(flight crews all the way down to dispatch and schedulers), training departments, fleet types, MX departments to handle multiple fleet types. It's not all about the jet. There are several examples of this floating around. Take two regionals flying the same equipment and you'll still have two different operating costs.

Several times you've stated how cost efficient AE is. If you didn't believe there was a difference in operating costs of each airline then why would you have made those statements. At some point you realize that.

MESA operates more that 5 200's on the airways side alone, to say nothing of what is remaining at GO and all the 200's they operate for UNITED. Where did you get this 5 AC number?

If you honestly think an outside service provider on a CPA can do it for less, and still turn a profit then you don't understand economics.

There's a reason outsourcing is cheaper. I understand how economics work. There's a reason the mainlines started going with outsourcing.

Let somebody else bear the financial risk of financing/leasing new airplanes and let the mainline save their own cash & credit?

To answer your question. No.

Just because one company owns another doesn't mean it's liable for all it's debts. Google Bank of America and Countrywide to get an idea of that. Take a look at IBM. AE currently has it's own debt and is liable for it.

They outsource because other companies can have different infrastructure as I wrote earlier. The different contractual language, labor relations, training departments, retirements, etc as well as lower risk from employee actions. With the multiple fleet types, old pilot group, operations and infrastructure I wouldn't be surprised if AE is one of the costliest regionals in the industry. Behind them I'd put Comair. Take a look at the operation cost per ASM for XJT, SKYW, RAH, PNCL, or Mesa and you'll see that each is different.

Do you think UPS is concerned about the financial risk of financing/leasing caravans or do you think they outsource that flying to other companies because it's cheaper in the grand scheme of things?

If a company like UPS wanted to buy every aircraft flying Brown boxes that was smaller than a 757, they could pay for them with cash...the same could not be said of an airline like United.

PSA is arguably "cheaper" than Republic flying 70 seat RJs, from both a labor and DOC perspective...so why then don't they grow? Because it is ultimately cheaper for LCC to outsource that flying and let somebody else deal with the risk/cost of acquiring airframes, so that they can use their available credit & cash to go over larger (more profitable) airframes.

I agree with you that there are multiple factors at play here, but to ignore the financial health of a company who is doing the outsourcing would be overlooking another one of those causation factors.