Originally Posted by
Speedbird2263
I wasn't here then, but it's my understanding that we had the E190 routing through the west coast without having a 190 West Coast base and it was the 190's reliability or lack thereof that killed that operation. The same strategy may be done with the A220, it has transcon range and is also comfortable doing relatively short hops.
Yeah it normally went via AUS iirc. And I was told they tried to fly it from like SLC-IAD and some other long weird routes on occasion...didn’t work out well. Also no dedicated mx on the west coast. Recipe for disaster. If they had made it an actual base and had parts stock and people who knew how to work on the 190 it could have been much better. But going forward they can’t half a$$ a base. If they ever do it, they need reserves, maintenance, and enough tails co-located in the system to absorb disruptions. Especially with a new plane. That’s why I don’t expect it to happen with the 220 until we have a large number of them. I would expect the 220 to do transcons fairly quickly though on some of the thin routes (RNO, ABQ, PDX, etc).