Hello everyone. This week’s edition of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted!

This week we talk again about the regional/major airline business model and why it’s broken. Meanwhile, after the American Eagle pilots said no to the proposed TA with American Airlines, pilots at Republic Holdings finally came to terms on a tentative agreement.  A coincidence? We think not.

Then there is SkyWest. We talk at length this week about the airline’s recent 4Q13 earnings release and analyze the airline’s earnings call. Long and short? I think the excuses for the  ExpressJet operation have run their course. As analyst Helane Becker suggested last week, perhaps it is finally time to pull the plug on the ExpressJet operation which has never been profitable since SkyWest acquired it.

We take a long in-depth look at the 4Q13 results from Air Canada this week as well. What a mess those were. We didn’t see the improvements in CASM and RASM the airline promised last quarter, and the margin performance we saw in 3Q13 evaporated in 4Q13. Meanwhile, WestJet, as we talked about last week, continues to make what we believe are strategically beneficial tweaks to their original LCC model.

Meanwhile, the Real Men of Genius are back. Yep. The union that represents the fractured group of pilots at US Airways, USAPA, is back and up to stupid tricks again. We get you up to speed on their latest antics this week — although our patience for such things has about run its course.

It was a decent week for airline stocks last week, although shares of both Air Canada and Bombardier fell off the cliff. Meanwhile, we share the latest “Question of the Week” results from Morgan Stanley’s latest institutional investor poll concerning United Airlines. 

A little bit of this. A little bit of that. And more. All in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.