Several E170 trips at Kansas City are being upgraded to E190 starting 12/1:

MCI-BOS (1 of 1)
MCI-DCA (3 of 3)
MCI-MSY (1 of 1)

These upgrades seem right in line with the goal to get the E170 off of longer and/or competitive nonstop routes. MCI-LGA still has two E170, which is (I believe) the longest E170 market left.

Nice to see. I wonder what their long term plans are for the E170. I know they prefer the E190 but I wonder if they will slowly remove the 170 from the fleet or move the 170 to current ER3/4 routes and slowly remove the ER3/4s. Obviously they might just keep all the planes and expand but it wouldn't surprise me to see them simplify the fleet if it made sense financially and they could fill a 170 on say MSN-MKE or GRB-MKE. With wifi and stretch the 170 would probably be a good fit for some lighter business markets.

Perhaps we'll see some of the E170s end up on some of the routes that currently have FL/OO CRJ competition. When those FL routes go away after WN takes over, that might be time to put the E-jets on the routes that still have some ERJ's.

The E170's have better economics than the RJ's, so it would be nice to see markets with potential like PIT, STL and OMA to drop RJ's in favor of E170, knowing they can afford more discounting and connections than the RJ.

Assuming competition leaves markets like Omaha, Indy and Pittsburgh with the WN/FL deal, fares (especially business fares) will go up. But I'm hopeful that the fairly reasonable fares we're seeing to Louisville, Columbus, and Dayton are the types they offer even if they have a new monopoly. I've been paying a lot of business fares to those monopoly cities the $120-$200 range (each way) with either 3 or 7 days advance. That's not cheap but not excessive as we've sometimes seen in the past. If they jack the fares up too much, it kills the high-yield traffic.