What was the Ejet pay offer Dragon? About $180,000 to operate a 100 seater by the end of the agreement. Not sure of any other operator that pays that much.
Yep the one thing you don't want to do is give management an incentive to look elsewhere for labour. With no scope there is no reason why they can't just start farming out flying to Alliance and/or Skywest.
Remember as far as ticketing goes a QF ticket = Qantaslink/National Jet/JetConnect/Mainline.