Here, I fixed it for you!
Originally Posted by
bailee atr
We had 39, parked 3 earlier this year. 3 more are being parked this month. The storing of these airframes was planed pre BK due to maintenance cost. It was cheaper for the company to park them and pay the leases then to fix them. The ATR's have depreciated in value to much to spend on high maintenance ticket items. We will be left with 33 active and 6 parked starting 2012. BK may accelerate the replacement of this fleet type.
AMR "needs" a T-Prop feed in DFW with all the military installations being served. Of course a jet can do the feed for a higher cost. But there is more to the ATR than fuel efficiency, CRJ or Q400 don't have the cargo room to carry all the military bags that account for over 60% of cargo being move by the ATR in Dallas. Also one has to take into account CG limits when loading thousands of pounds worth heavy military bags in the rear of the aircraft but only having 1/2 the seats filled. The ERJ doesn't have the carrying capacity of the ATR. The military pays allot more than we do on Travelocity for a ticket, AMR would be abandoning profits if this was the case. With that said management can drop frequency or abandon routes done by the ATR but one would think that the ATR 72-600 is in play, AMR has been in negotiations with ATR for the 600 as early as this summer. AMR asked ATR to upgrade the Pack. AMR has stated that aircrafts will be parked and or replaced, the ATR is a leased aircraft that is past its "passenger" time, There are cargo carriers that will look to acquire the ATRs once AMR vacates the leases and thus opening the opportunity to lease a new aircraft. Most are soon to be due for heavy maintenance that makes replacing the entire airframe more economical. AMR CH11 has been in the works for a long time, doesn't matter how much relief AA/AE employees would have given in contract 30,000,000,000 worth of debt was still in the books. AMR would have taken on even more debt with the arriving aircraft order and older aircraft parked but paying leases for. We don't know what the future holds for us, but we know the training department is training full speed ahead (it's actually backed up), and they made changes and re-posted the flow plan but we have put a freeze to hiring for the time being (hover long that might be)