I ordered 100 of them thinking it was a good size airplane for a lot of routes. When half of the plane is full of connecting passengers, the plane looses money on each rotation! If it's full of O&D, it barely breaks even!
Just took delivery of the first of these birds. I know the Russian jets guzzle fuel but this is ridiculous! Are the numbers correct for fuel burn on such a small jet?
I have no idea why these aircraft are not more popular / better utilized. I started out with a used fleet of them, and you can fly them a long way with just enough seats. I mean, they're hands down the best airplane for long, thin routes that are too small for the 757 (or in my case, I just use two of them daily instead of one 757.)
However in this world, I'm the only one with a large fleet of them while everyone else is content with generic-jets like the 737-300.
I'm looking forward to the new SWA, but I feel your pain about loosing FL. I felt awful when we lost Midwest - FL's competitor! I had such an excellent time on their 717s on MCI-SFO-MCI - Republic really destroyed that airline, now MCI isn't but a spoke and the MKE hub is gone.
That being said, now I work for AA - the absolute worst for keeping old remnants of their acquired competitors around: Air Cal, RenoAir, TWA, you name it, the AA montra is keep the Super 80s and get rid of the rest.
Best of luck to you as you go through the transition mate.