Originally Posted by martin33
3+ hr RJ flights are, mostly, not in the HP business plan. their most recent RJ-related action was to scale that fleet down a bit, not up. RJ's are not a magic bullet. They are a very high-cost source (15-20cents per asm) which can only work in specific circumstances--- where they stand to be attracting significant connecting traffic into the network at high yields.
they might as well keep the starlight hub at LAS, provided its marginal costs are being covered; it's not as if the planes are doing anything else at that hour. PIT is ripe for further downsizing, surely. a careful trimming of frequencies at CLT and PHL doesn't seem enough to kill 70-odd US planes-- that's about 25% of their mainline fleet, after all.
My comment about longer RJ flights was just in relation to conventional wisdom around a mid-continent hub. It's going to be difficult to connect some of the smaller markets into PHX without usage of some RJ's -- or HP could go for a mid-continent focus city/hub. That was the extent of my comments. (I understand and agree that RJ's are astronomically expensive in terms of CASM -- not really sure why the airlines are using them so much).