Bear,
The reason the whole thing is so silly is that MAA is not really even a seperate airline, its a division. It's like the US Airways Shuttle used to be, seperate contract within the mainline. Or maybe your foriegn nationals, or TED, or United Shuttle. I'm trying to find a way to explain to you that MAA is not like Allegheny, Piedmont, or PSA, which are seperate airlines that are owned by the US Airways Group. Not that it would make any sense to use the assets of our faltering airline to help out your faltering airline at no benefit to us, but Piedmont or Allegheny would at least make a little more sense?
The FAA refers to "MidAtlantic" as the Embraer Division of US Airways. For this to come true, MAA would have to be carved out of US Airways and sold to someone (UAL only owns United Airlines and doesnt seem interested in adding another after the Air Wisconsin fiasco). This would be an asset transfer, or semi-merger right up there with with a certain captains wild tales. MAA assets cannot be contracted to anyone but US Airways (or the predeccessor if the case may be).
United would be better off perhaps, starting its own "small jet" division to return furloughees to work and protect UAL jobs from being outsourced. Your suggestion that US Airways should be allowed to fly 80 seat, possibly dual class jets under your code makes me think your not loking out for your own. Why would UAL keep 737-500s and expensive mainline employees when you're willing to contract such work to a commuter or another airline?
Its a slippery slope that we have seen here at US... Right now, UA is bringing Trans States and Mesa back into the fold- bad news for everyone. One day you might look around your hub (IAD) at rush hour and see not a single United plane, but scores of "United" planes opertated by Air Willy, ACA, Trans States, Mesa, SkyWest, Chautauqua.... it happened to us in PIT! One day its a 30 seat prop, then its a 50 seat jet, then 70, then 90, and before you know it someone is flying your routes in the "RJ" (a misnomer) equivalent of a 737 or MD80, on your routes, at a third of the pay. Bear, reading through your posts here regarding ACA, I think you understand this well.
As a predominantly short haul airline in the busiest and most congested part of the nation (all the cities are close together), we at U are the most susceptible to this latest outsourcing phenomenon. MAA is the best solution at the moment, at least let our own furloughees be the cheap labour instead of every mom and pop commuter you can find. We are not happy with this set-up at all but its the best we could get at this time. Its very painful to undercut ourselves, and as mainline employees who have worked hard for our careers, we do get angry at the suggestion of doing it to another airline.
Thats what Mesa does. They've done it to us and they are painting the sweeping U on some planes as we type. You can have them, we dont want them.