Adfly; I totally Agree
For those who actually do some research instead of posting frankly stupid ill informed comments, the rationale behind the Embraer/Flybe/Republic deal is as follows:-
Previous Flybe management commited to purchase 35 E175s. New management
realized that, given the appalling state of the company at the time and the re focussing of the company on cutting costs they needed to dump the E175 order.
Initially, due to contractual commitments, the orders were deferred.
Subsequently and fortunately republic wanted to focus on E175s for their future needs and a deal was done between the three parties whereby Republic would takeover 20 of the remaining E175 orders in return for Flybe subleasing 24 Q400s.
The 24 Q400s were never earmarked totally for fleet expansion and it was announced at the time that a number of them would be replacing Aircraft whose leases were expiring.
This deal has saved the company a fortune and is all in the public domain so for gods sake, kcockayne in particular, stop posting such crass ill informed negative comments