It's obvious that the aviation industry is suffering at the moment with fuel prices and less people justifying the expense of flying. BE in particular are at risk seeing as domestic travel is the hardest hit but even so BE largely have no competition on most of their routes and it seems these cuts could be the sign of more things to come.
My question is despite the obvious mentioned above whether the purchase of the 175's plays a part? Certainly in my eyes they are a total folly and replacing the undisputed champion of cheap travel in the q400 purely to satisfy the snobbery of jets being better than props. I believe the q400 was a massive reason why BE could grow so fast and become the Goliath it is today. Yes they are noisy and unreliable but they are worked like dogs. Perhaps rather than buying a new fleet money could have been better spent on more frequent maintenance or perhaps even to follow Ryanair's model of buying in bulk and having a quick turnover of replacement?