Its not a CRJ70. They're going to be ERJ 145's (50 pax) to backfill for 190's undergoing mx upgrades as well as making up for Embraer's lack of ability to meet customer orders on time.
With our new self inflicted Bill of Industry Leading Customer Compensation, bumpings are awarded 1000 bucks cash, and cancellations can finagle double their money back quite easilly, not to mention meals, hotels, etc. If this is truly temporary, its better than the endless revenue bleedback that would have been the alternative.
I'm not saying that I like it, but they're not 70 seaters. Yet. And they're just temporary. For now. This should at least put to rest any credibility that we "deferred" any 190 deliveries. The airframes we "slid to the right" on our delivery schedule never were coming to us even if we wanted them to because Embraer wasn't able to meet their order books so we gave them relief. I hope they paid us for that favor but I doubt it. At the very least I hope we didn't get suckered into paying a deferral fee of some kind, though I suspect we probably did.
Of course its possible this (ExpressJet thing) was necessary to mitigate the impact on our customers for a short term, one time event. Kind of like AirTran subbing out Ryan for a little while, then bringing everything 100% back in house. I hope our leadership isn't trying to dabble in the outsource "express/connection/airlink/babyblue/etc" fiasco. Of course if they do I hope we get a really sweet bargaining credit in exchange. :laugh: