Originally Posted by
avpilot
any idea on how they are going to cover the routes in the islands once all the atr's are parked? What's the timescale before they are all parked anyways?
There are only about 3 airports that AMR absolutely needs the ATR for.
Beef Island, Key West and Nevis under 5K ft runway
Dominica, well just youtube landings in this place.
AMR has moved away from SJU and is doing allot of the flying with the 737 and 757 out of MIA (make sense, why concert in San Juan when you can go direct). The Bahamas are not economical on a Jet. You will see AMR continue to fly a Turbo Prop, probably the ATR 72-600. APA and AA are close to a contract, once this has been signed you will see a better picture on what will happen with Eagle. As of right now the older ATRs will be parked (we are in slow season), but AMR can implement the new ATR overnight since it only requires transition training that is just a few days worth of training. Similar to what we do now, train on the 72-212 and train differences on the 72-212A (-500). The main change will be the avionics and that can be done with CBT and very little hands on. The ATR can carry almost double it's weight while burning 1,600 lbs an hr. In short trips there is no airplane that can compete with it. So we have to wait and see what happens on the American Contract, then we can see where things might go...
Cough, cough... One List... A guy can only wish...