Originally Posted by
sailingfun
Where do you get this stuff? Alaska had a major pulldown in 2008 and 2009. They are growing now but calling it gangbusters is quite a stretch.
"""The carrier's president, Brad Tilden, told analysts today that Alaska is planning to offer by 1 April 2012 all furloughed pilots the option of returning to work. He says the pilots, which are represented by the Air Line Pilots Association and signed a new contract in 2009, will be the last group of furloughed employees at Alaska to be fully recalled.
Alaska requires more pilots as the carrier continues to pursue modest mainline growth. Three new Boeing 737-800s will be added to the fleet this year. The fleet will grow by another three aircraft next year as six 737-800s are delivered and three older 737s are retired."""
Gangbusters? They might get all their furloughed guys back next year!
...We can only wish AirFrance was having Gangbuster growth. We have a outstanding joint venture agreement. If they are getting gangbuster growth on anything involving the joint venture then we are getting it also!!!
In July KLM, Delta and AirFrance met and portioned out the capacity cuts to comply with that agreement. In fact that is why we are picking up ORD-CDG.
Sailing, that's info from Jan 2011,
From the Alaska Air 8-K SEC filing on Sept 13 2011:
Q3 Capacity +6%
Full Year Capacity planned +8-9% YOY
Adding 25 new Boeing 737-800 & 737-900ER.
Parking 3 737-400
Net gain of 21 jets out of 117 mainline AC.
Alaska Air will have a net 18% fleet growth in the next 4 Years
If DAL had plans to grow the fleet by 18% in the next 4 years:
It would mean adding net 130 jets to our fleet after subtracting out the parked planes.
The DAL fleet would go from 727 to 908 jets in the next four years.
As for the furloughs, you are right, Alaska has 19 guys on furlough.
The August bid had 36 vacancies.
By early next year Alaska plans on running 10-12 pilots a month.
Alaska plans to hire approx. 380 pilots in the next three years, thats about 25% gain in pilots, or somewhere around 20% after attrition...
Let me put that in perspective, if Delta were hiring a similar percentage of pilots, we would have 3000 new-hires in the next 3 years.
I would say thats Gangbusters growth, but your standards might differ. ;-)
Cheers
George
(I've backed out the AS Q400 and DAL RJs for the fleet comparison sake)