Originally Posted by
Andy
Let me just toss this into the mix...
With the company now offering 50 hour SRL lines, the cost of operating 737s and 319/320s just got cheaper and may be cheaper to operate than RJs. In order to operate those additional flights as mainline, it will now cost the company 73 hrs for pilots to fly it vs 50 hrs for pilots to do nothing. That means the marginal additional mainline pilots cost 31% of what they used to.
You can bet that Scott Kirby is calculating the cost comparison using various formulae.
I wouldn't be surprised to see United shed some RJ contracts soon, whether or not they opt to use mainline aircraft on RJ routes.
I hope you’re right. I was talking to my mom today. She said that this is reminding her of the polio scare when she was little. It was a horrible disease and people were afraid, but when the vaccine came out and was proven to work, things got back to normal pretty quick. Hopefully when we come up with a vaccine for this illness things will begin to rebound fairly quickly. The economy has been damaged though and will get worse until that time. It’s kind of like letting a bunch of air out of a ball. It will bounce, but only a fool would expect it to bounce as high as it would have before the air was let out. This isn’t going to be a 3 month pause and then business as usual like myself and others initially thought it would, this has grown into a game changer.