Originally Posted by
afterburn81
- Skywest and Expressjet are kind of what could be considered the premium of regional carriers. Sure they are just regional carriers but they have been around a while, have made a ton of money, never went BK, hardly ever lose money and have a wicked heavy pilot group with respect to seniority. I can't imagine SKW or XJT are doing the flying any cheaper. If anything you would think it would be more expensive. Why not some cheapo (Gojetz style) carrier?
- ERJ vs CRJ - Does anyone no for sure if one is more expensive to operate than the other? It would seem as if the CRJ is. I only say that because of the operational speeds and altitude differences. I know that ERJ can get up to the mid 30's easily fully loaded. That CRJ doesn't usually make it up there especially fully loaded. This has to impact efficiency.
Thoughts?
Well, on the legacy Expressjet side we hired something like 700-800 new pilots over the last two years, so we have about 1/4 of our group on first or second year FO pay, so despite having some really senior guys we have a lot of new people as well.
As far as the ERJ vs the CRJ I have no idea, but we are also the only company with the 145XRs, and they are better than 1/3 of the total fleet. They've got to be more efficient than just about any other 50 seater out there, at least in my opinion. They burn more gas in the climb but they climb to altitude WAY faster (was holding 3000 ft/min for a while with a full plane yesterday now that temps are coming down some), plus operating over longer ranges at higher altitudes means a higher percentage of time in the more efficient realm of flight. Plus, you can operate out of hot and high airports that I don't think you can get a CRJ-200 into.
That being said, I'm speculating and I really have no idea which plane (145 vs -200 in general) is more efficient in total from a combination of fuel+maintenance costs.
Now, on the legacy ASA side they definitely have a LOT of really senior people and not a lot of hiring over the past few years.