Alaska Airlines is taking steps to manage the near term regional flying needs of our guests, while Horizon Air executes its recovery plan to hire and train the pilots it needs for the long term.

To help fly additional high-growth markets for Alaska, SkyWest today announced an order for 10 new Embraer E175 jets, five of which were previously announced during Alaska’s Q2 earnings. The total number of aircraft that SkyWest will operate for Alaska will be 30 in 2018. Alaska is considering contracting with SkyWest for five additional jets that would be flown in our network on a longer-term basis.

SkyWest will be helping Alaska in its efforts to grow its presence on the West Coast, and is also picking up some short-term flying on Alaska’s network with CRJ-200s, said John Kirby, vice president, capacity planning.

As previously announced, Horizon is deferring delivery of six E175 jets until later in 2018, when the airline expects to have a sufficient number of pilots hired and trained.

Air Group’s commitment to purchase 30 E175 aircraft for Horizon Air remains unchanged.

“Horizon has picked up the pace in pilot recruitment and training, but it’s not enough to resolve this issue without impacting our guests in the near term,” said John Hornibrook, Horizon’s vice president, flight operations. “These changes give us time to ramp up our recruiting and training efforts so we can get back on course.”

Alaska is also going to make adjustments to reduce Horizon’s fall and winter schedule, with an eye toward exiting underperforming markets, making adjustments to seasonal flying, and thinning the schedule in some high-frequency Horizon markets.

“We’re simply slowing things down to catch up on pilot hiring and training, because we don’t have enough pilots to fly the aircraft we have today,” said Horizon President and CEO Dave Campbell. “To give some perspective, we’ve hired 189 pilots, but lost 111 mostly to mainline carriers.”

Campbell said hiring and training has accelerated at Horizon, “but the reality is that it’s going to take time to fully staff the ranks of our line pilots. These changes give us the time we need as we continue to ramp up our recruiting and training efforts, while reducing the inconvenience for our guests.”