Flying regional jets on mainline/medium haul routes and offering nothing more than a beverage service. No wonder no one wants to fly them.
RJ’s are not the reason for their troubles. US was very late with implimenting RJ’s across their route structure, much later than their competition. They actually kept RJ’s from their 4 wholy-owned regional carriers until last year. While the rest of us were jetting around in ERJ/CRJ’s, US was providing service in Dash 8’s and Do328’s. Rather then jump on the RJ boom with everyone else, US got caught up in a fight to only allow their own company fly them for 10% less. Well that fight cost them years which is why their first CRJ flight by a wholly-owned regional (PSA) was this year. The rest of the industry has been flying RJ’s since 1995.
US did farm out some of their routes to outside carriers who flew RJ’s (Chautauqua and Mesa) but not for a majority of their short haul flying as they still had 100 turboprops in their system. Actually some of the flying Mesa Airlines picked up was with the B1900D.
US is now scrambling to catch up to the rest of the airlines. They’ve finally started to reap the benefits of small jets but it’s too little too late. To intensify their $$ return we’re seeing them slash their workers salary by 1/3rd or more every year. Now they have mainline pilots flying those EMB-170’s for less then most pilots are paid to fly an EMB-145 at competing regional carrier.
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