In their defence the capacity-to-demand management was a losing battle since the $5 Billion deal to sign the Embraers. Saad did a brilliant job of transferring most of the order to Republic Airways, but still had to accept 24 Q400 in return. He was upfront that these aircraft were surplus to capacity, and running them at a loss was better than accepting the E-Jets.
The ideal fleet would've been 30-40 Q400 and no E-Jets....Cyrus has the ability to manage this.
Can’t imagine any new startup will involve more than 10-15 airframes!