Aussie FO, the decision to purchase the ejet was the right one at the time, and in my opinion, still is. Which by default makes the decision to remove them no so clever.
There is a definite place for a 100 seat jet in our market, QF cant get enough 717's and the crews and punters love the Embraer.
The investment has been made in getting engineering and crew up to speed on the airframe, the training facilities are all here and we are throwing it away.
We will now fly 176 seat jets with 76 punters on them on some routes, at a loss, to "rationalise" the fleet.
Yes there is a place for sensible fleet rationalisation, but I suspect this isn't it.
The ATR's were a huge mistake. I would think that keeping the ejet until the e2 came along, then pass the "classic" ejet to vara and replace the f100 would have been a smart move. Do all the training here, leverage off 10 years of operating the Embraer, happy crews who were flying it, happy punters, inflight wifi ife, etc etc etc. the 6 170's could and did do what the ATR's were leased for, and let's face it, give the travelling public the choice of a jet or turboprop, frequent flyer points aside, they would pick the jet nearly every time.
In the widebody world, both the 777 and the 330 are spectacular aeroplanes, but perhaps the better option was to and grab some of the whitetail "terrible teens" 787-8 which are (or were at the time) parked up at everett and use them with a common crew across the 777 group.
The terrible teens were heavy and didn't meet performance guarantees but were cheap and had the necessary capability to do transcontinental and Asia.