One airline. Either wholly owned or independent with slpit cost/revenue. Merger of Piedmont, PSA, Air Wisconsin. Q200, Q300, CR2, CR7, Q400, CR9. Q Series for short flights, jets for longer flights. E70 back to mainline along with it's bigger sisters- EMBs are short/medium haul mainline jets in 70-120 seat range, The CRJ/Qs are Express ops in 37-90 seat range. One product, new name, it's own brand and livery with elements of US Airways brand. More of a sister airline with it's own personality than pale imposter of mainline.
Examples to follow- Horizon Air, Air Canada Jazz.
Contracted Express is only to outsource jobs and and is more expensive than operating in-house. There are only 7 or 8 Express carriers for union busting, whipsawing, and eliminating as many mainline jobs as possible. Example- it was cheaper to operate MidAtlantic not only in-house but on the main certificate, with higher quality mainline employees, than it is to pay the disasterous Republic to do the same thing. It is also stupid to have so many carriers that have very little service- example what is the point of retaining Trans States with a dozen planes?
Some of the smaller prop flying can remain outside as seperately branded regional airlines under the US code, like how the GoCarribbean network is. US code, but your not diluting your own brand. The only good contract USAirways has is Colgan Air, because it is not fee per departure, Colgan shares in the costs and in the revenue plus brings it's own valuable slots and routes to the table, so it's more like a codeshare. Same goes for the 19 seat service- someone has to do it anyway, US may as well slap it's code on those carriers flights for the sake of extending the network. But contract RJs as mainline killers needs to stop- they are costing the company millions, they are on the wrong routes, and the terrible service by the contractors is losing customers.
