ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
God help me for defending Velo but...
Airways runs 190s on 30 minute legs all the time. It seems to be working out just fine for them.
I'm thinking Velo has plenty of AK time. In fact, I'm guessing he's been doing it a bit longer than you have.
And here's where your argument completely dies. The 190/195 is NOT an RJ. Simply because it's a natural progression from the 170 doesn't make it fit that category. The economics of a 100+ seat jet and a 70/75/86 seat jet are totally different. Now, would they have issues on some of the runways? I don't know. Most of the figures I've seen show that the 195 has the as or better performance in all areas than the 737. However, there may be some DPs up there that are just so crazy that the 190 couldn't handle them. But as far as distance and load stuff, it's more than capabile.
Look, RJs have been out for a while, someone would have done it already, the problem is there's no market for it up here. If they really want to make money, they should q400 it up, or run hondos, not jets. I will grant that maybe if they operated exclusively in southeast and if (big if) they could take off from all of these airports at max gross, then they might turn a profit, but I doubt they will, its not exactly like alaska's last great idea made any money (combi jets), so we'll see where this one goes.
-pat