Originally Posted by
Itsajob
Being totally dependent on United for routes doesn’t really put you guys in a better position. United could build you up, or take everything away. I seriously doubt that either will occur. The reductions are big enough that Expressjet will share in the pain and end up with a furlough and a smaller fleet at the end of the day just like everyone else. Some airlines will take bigger hits than others, but we’re all going to get beat up in this deal.
Wish I could bet you a grand on this. My take is that October is plenty of time for travel demand to recover at least somewhat. We were already so short staffed we could park about 1/3 of our planes without furloughing anyone. Your assertions may apply to many airlines, but XJT is in the unique position of having just been given more planes to fly with no staffing to fly the planes we already had. Obviously we didn’t get in this position by being a fantastic place to work, yet here we are. If XJT furloughs this entire industry is in dire straits. We have already been declared “too big to fail” as a whole. It won’t happen. Not to mention any plan to phase out 50 seat flying absolutely requires a reasonable plan to replace the lift to the markets that aircraft serves. Due to scope limits UA would end up having to use mainline aircraft to do some of it. I guess anything is possible but I don’t see it happening in such a short time frame when as you said, no one has a clue what travel demand will be in 6 months.
Perhaps you just have no idea what the current situation is at XJT, but your assertions are certainly on the extreme negative side. Not really what I would call “realistic.” At a minimum highly speculative.