Originally Posted by
fumje
Do they really treat regional carriers as non-fungible? E.g. if my flight is SkyWest and there is a problem, they will not consider reassigning to GoJet even if same config, but instead will force waiting for another SkyWest aircraft? It's been a while, but I can remember having a late aircraft swap at EWR to recover a 3hr delay into a 20min one. I didn't think to wonder if they swapped UAX carriers or just shuffled within the same carrier.
They will rarely swap carriers. Things are planned weeks in advance at the carriers. If Skywest has lets say an airplane problem, GoJet will not fill in and vice versa. Certainly not day of. These companies are competitors, they do not talk to one another and no one at United is coordinating at this low a level. It's up to Skywest to recover Skywest ops, Mesa deals with Mesa issues. Even if GoJet had an airplane and crew available, they would save them for covering a GoJet problem. The regionals are all judged on their performance metrics and if GoJet loaned a plane and crew to fix a Skywest problem and then had a problem themselves, their own numbers would suffer.