Originally Posted by
ShyGuy
Why? That would be the costliest move. No VX guy showed up in the first ~420 positions on the current list. Almost all the senior 737 group in SEA would bid the Bus and create a huge transition cost. That’s on top of having to train all the VX guys onto the Boeing anyway. Cheapest would be to let LAX take care of itself because both fleets are already there, and open a SFO 737 base. That would be bid mostly by people currently already in SFO. The last thing AS wants are Boeing guys bidding Bus when they go single fleet. The latest bid is a good example of reducing Bus CAs by 20. Like MEA said, the next bid can also have another reduction with vacancies on the Boeing in LA and other bases, while not having to proffer the reduced Bus spots.
In any case, the worse part about this is forcing guys to make bid decisions without any fleet or drawdown plan. How can pilots make long term plans without knowing the final fleet? A classic example is guys that bid from LA Airbus to LA Boeing because they wanted the SNA flying, and then all of a sudden as of January the Boeing SNA was greatly eliminated and a large increase on the Airbus side. How were the guys who bid Boeing for SNA supposed to know that? They find out in training. Not a good scenario. People want to and need to make long term plans when it comes to base and fleet bidding, so we must know the fleet plan and final drawdown schedule ASAP so we can all bid accordingly.
None of that matters to those making the decisions on fleet plans and where to shift flying. My uneducated guess with rumor/opinion that’s not worth anything was that the NEO’s will be a stop gap for Max 9 arrivals until that gets completely sorted. There’s a very real possibility that Max’s don’t completely 1 for 1 the Airbus fleet and that a smaller sub fleet of 190 or 195’s pick up the West Coast hops kinda like a West Coast JetBlue. I also don’t see them going to Horizon although it’s always a possibility, in the end it’s not likely to be any real fleet growth. Ask yourself this where can we go that isn’t jam packed already? I know it’s great to see airlines ordering 100 airplanes but I don’t see where they’re going to put them so until they’re all on property with no returns I’m skeptical. Likewise where are we going to expand to? LAX SFO SEA are all packed, short of maybe adding a couple more flights a day to popular city pairs I don’t see anything drastic coming here and this picture of massive growth that MEA paints leaves me scratching my head.