Originally Posted by
RAHkid94
How so? The CEO of United made a statement that under most conditions means we won’t be flying anymore, and everyone here is debating about how he might not have meant what he said. Now is the time to pull the trigger on any sort of backup plan before 600 of us are fighting over a skydiving job.
drama much?
...this has become worse than a group of sophomore girls planning their whole married life off of one drunken comment by the quarterback at an after party.
We’ve known for at least a decade that management types would love to get rid of 50 seaters and replace them with unlimited large RJs...if this can be done for ‘free’ (not having to pay any of the costs for this change and only keeping the the benefits for themselves). This is exactly what SK has done at AA and has been trying (and failing) to do at UAL since Parker fired him and the BOD picked him up to show Oscar the exit and put the screws on labor groups to increase profits.
He NEEDS a large scope cave for any of this to mean a single hill of beans—I cannot be any more explicit about this but people around here are willfully ignoring the whole set of facts. He won’t get it. If he doesn’t get a scope cave, he needs bankruptcy to try something like this. This has huge dangers for him:
1.) SK will most likely not be in charge at that point. (Except perhaps in a #5 scenario, which has been his and Parker’s MO since the AmericaWest days. There is a whole additional wrinkle to this: looking at how AA union groups have faired under Parker I would be very surprised if he got the labor buy-in from mainline to pull it off again...but who knows)
2.) The economics of small RJs on a trip cost basis will be very apparent and favorable.
3.) The government will have a huge say in a quasi-nationalization (which is what a UAL bankruptcy will look like except perhaps for #5) in forcing a kind of Essential Air Service that will prop up 50 seat demand until the next wave of deregulation. 10-50 years depending upon how deep this recession/depression is.
4.) Any CAPEX will be essentially zero for the foreseeable future.
5.) Any prepackaged bankruptcy will need exit financing, probably from within the industry given how badly the sector is/will be viewed. The only two carriers that MAY be positioned to provide that and have a history of doing such deals are major UAX 50 seat operators.