Regionals and their Majors

[dogg]

As a mentor pilot, I am looking for thoughts on the following;

1) How tied to their Major airline partners are the big Regionals(awac, skywest, comair, asa, aca, co-ex, eagle, mesaba etc...) when it comes to contraction, expansion, ch-11 etc....

2) Do you suppose that any of those regionals could survive on their own with out there major partners (skywest and air wis come to mind)

3) Do you ever see a time where the big regional non-owned carriers would band together under a new name and become their own major airline

Trying to do a little crystal ball work here and any help would be appreciated.

ps... I am not taking any stand on any of these issues just curious

 

[climbhappy]

introspective look at regionals

this is what i've come across...regionals like mesa are preferred by majors to do the regional flying because of all the issues. mesa prefers a fee per departure over revenue splits because it gaurantees income and they know what to expect. for the independents that may be the trend, for wholly owns it gets into enron type accounting and as we've seen , any cpa can bury a loss or a gain anywhere. i think they're dependent, because johnny o owns over 5million shares of us air stock, it might be crazy, but he could with his investor group make a play for usairways in the bankruptsy court.

2) if you look at the success of comair before they were bought , i think the answer is a clear yes, some of the best industry buzzis available every week at www.AviationNow.com, Jetblue , who was recently featured had its CEO say "staying small is the key to future success. my own two cents says the majors or big three will be heavily reliant on international travel which is why they all seem to be lining up codeshare deals with other foreign carriers.
For most domestic carriers like SWA, airtran, jetblue or as you envisioned, some newly created RJ operation with 500 jets, the one type model, lower fares, heavy traffic, which means well paid pilots, (remember its the revenue) equals success.

3) i think consolidation is the current trend, but something very interesting should happen in USairway BK.