Originally Posted by
Mildred Pierce
I think the flying SKW turned down was the Colgan Q400 flying for United.
Likely, but I am not sure that SKW was a player for this flying. Whoever besides RAH took over this flying was going to build a Dash-8 program and likely would have taken 12+ months after Colgan parked the airplanes for them to be flying again, United would have lost a lot of capacity during this time (of course there are the smaller regionals who fly -8 out there). But SKW would have taken a long time, RAH has the program and is looking to park 50 seater so the staffing is there (somewhat) and the program is in place. As far as SKW and RAH being out of the picture for AMR flying I wish it was true, but so far the only legal flying that AMR could put out was the EMJ flying and likely wanted to see if anyone would underbid for that flying to get in the door. If SCOPE is relaxed (likely) and 70+ seaters are operated for AA, you will see other regionals take a different approach. With that said AMR is putting a lot of money into Eagle these days and it will be interesting if they chose to spin it off or farm out all the flying like they state:
TPS (we are using performance like AA does, they are making us more and more like AA everyday)
Cat II (they are finishing up the last FAA requirements and trials will begin shortly, or se we are told)
Aspen (if they will farm out the flying, why not give it to SKW. Who actually uses softer number in Aspen and is able to carry more weight and different procedures)
EFB (we already have the manuals approved and should have the jepps up and running for everybody in the next month or two)
AQP (the union made a big fuzz but it's likely happening with the ATP requirements)
AMR management is saying many things but at the same time they are doing many things, the facts are they will look to drive labor cost as low as possible and we don't have much leverage, but right now we don't know what they will do with us.
*being sold to someone would likely negate all this programs as we would likely merge operations, and being spun off will have its difficulties since we are embedded with AA in so many areas.