Originally Posted by duvie

Its a fine line mate. Most of us have been at our respective regionals longer than we anticipated, and most of us have friends on the list that are a few years behind us and lifers that will ride the ship to the end. That said, the ills we wish on our company will befall those colleagues.

In my less than fully educated opinion, I believe SkyWest has reached a size that is inherently inefficient. One list or three, having irons in so many fires (UAL/COEX, DCI, USair, Horizon, and counting) with a pilot group of 7,000+ seems very difficult to manage well; add to the equation that most of the current management team are pilots who came up through the ranks with little to no formal business training (not that a college degree necessarily prepares you to run a company, but its a pretty important tool to have). Even if we consolidated tomorrow, I think the operation would have to grow and become less dependent on the whims of our mainline partners. Right now regionals seem overburdened with the task of creating successful operating structures and then having them subject to the tweaks of mainline partners who may or may not understand the implications of their desired corrections. Down the road I believe the larger regionals will likely become more like codeshare partners than affiliates, which will mean more risk but more freedom as well.

Originally Posted by flyprdu

This thread is invalid since you spelled "losing" correctly.

Originally Posted by dogpilot

What college education has done is enabled these ceo's to operate without any ethics or morals. Particularly in the airline industry, rarely is performance tied to a college degree because they are failing and walking away with handsome bonuses. I'd much rather have someone who came through the ranks with a degree of moral grounding.