Why does this subject keep getting brought up time and time again? It's old news and has been beaten to death. But the Comair and ASA guys keep forgetting one thing - wholly owned vs. contract carriers. SkyWest/Air Wisconsin/ACA/CHQ etc are independently owned, they HAVE to bid aggressively in order to keep their contracts intact. If not, they risk losing that flying altogether. It sucks, but that seems to be the reality. ASA, CMR, Eagle, Horizon, etc. are wholly owned...they're guaranteed a feeder contract for their owners. There's little risk of that contract just evaporating (USAirways' actions with PDT/ALG/PSA is a whole other story). But of course when an independent puts in a lower bid to keep a contract, the mainline will ask the same of their wholly owned regionals. It's part of the Management 101 handbook...divide and conquer all pilot groups. By the way, I voted no on that piece of crap agreement. Also, I agree that av8tor02 appears to be suffering from hypoxia. Things aren't that wonderful at SkyWest.
Nice work bringing up the strike subject, Blade. From what I recall, SkyWest didn't take Comair jets during the strike. Comair returned them to Bombardier and they were placed on the open market. SkyWest got a deal on them to advance the delivery schedule. Somewhat similar to Delta, Northwest, Midway, etc. operating ex-Eastern equipment. Eastern had shut down, but weren't their pilots technically still on strike? Aircraft on the open market are fair game. One more thing: would it kill you to use capital letters to start a sentence as well as proper punctuation instead of ... between each thought? It's just a thought, but then again, grammar and spelling were never strong points on Flightinfo.com.