Originally Posted by
webecheck
Anyone care to speculate what the 74 reduction and 78/777 shifting means for the future of SFO 756? Does it remain predominantly domestic and Hawaii 75 stuff?
I am not aware of any changes announced for 756 flying out of San Francisco so I'm not sure why you would correlate the 747 being retired with changes in the 756 fleet?
Originally Posted by
Dave Fitzgerald
Yes, block hours. # of airframes, sort of. When management says they will replace with the 777-300er's, they order the minimum necessary. If anything goes wrong, unplanned MX, let alone an engine change, the schedule will fall apart. The way I see it, even with 18, it's close to bare minimum to operate just what the 747 is flying now, plus a few that should have been larger metal all along.
Financial benefit? Efficient yes, but we've been down this road before with inadequate resources. As an employee, I wouldn't be arguing managements side. They will hose us every time.
The 747 is currently flying 6 city pairs. All of those flights could be covered by any 777, 200 or 300. There would be a seat loss, but not a wholesale loss of coverage. The 300 has, if I remember correctly, only 8 seats less than the 747 and carries 30 pallets which is exactly the same as a 747. In fact, it was already happening on occasion that a 777 would replace a 747 on specific segments when one or more 747s went down for a mechanical. I believe there will be a significant increase in reliability overall, not a decrease. Plus I disagree with the sentiment that this management team is providing "inadequate resources". I believe they are finally making efficient use of our fleet which will hopefully translate to an improving bottom line for UCH.
Originally Posted by
azdryheat
They are planning on operating to 8 cities in November with the 777-300.
Not sure how that will work when it takes 2 airplanes minimum for each city. When they get to 18 airframes that will probably work.
Originally EWR was supposed to get most of the -300's, but looks like SFO has most of the flying. EWR will only get TLV and NRT.
According to the the fleet head honcho, there was never a plan to fly the -300 out of EWR. The rumor, as best I could tell, started with the EWR FAs because they got wind of the one route that was slated for a -300 that being the TLV. From there it became all the -300s. I asked while I was out at training and was told the fleet had no idea where the -300s were being deployed. I realize TK is not at the front of information, but I like to believe if the plan was to send all the -300s to EWR, that would be something they would have heard before the EWR line pilots.
What are the 8 city pairs? I believe the 787 is getting some of the 747 routes, and currently the 747 is only flying 6 routes: LHR, FRA, ICN, PEK, PVG, TPE. Also for flights over 10 hours the number I was told is 3 airframes per 10+ hour route. Hence 18 747s for 6 city pairs.
Originally Posted by
Probe
It is their job to operate the airline with the minimum. We couldn't compete otherwise.
The 777's will be vastly more reliable than the 400's. That is one of the reasons to get rid of the 400. 4 engine airplanes just have too many parts to break. They tried for years to get the reliability up. They finally, wisely, gave up.
I love the airplane - it is an icon of aviation history. But, it is history.
Bring on the 300ER's. And my profit sharing check.
+1000