Air Wisconsin Signs 5 Year CPA With United
 

Air Wisconsin Signs 5 Year CPA With United.
5 year CPA
65 CRJ-200's
Feb 2018 - Feb 2023
Hub's at ORD and IAD

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Dear Fellow Employees,

I am very pleased to announce that yesterday Air Wisconsin and United Airlines executed an exclusive five-year Capacity Purchase Agreement to operate up to 65 CRJ 200 aircraft through February of 2023, with a potential two-year extension. The aircraft will be inducted into United’s network commencing no later than February 2018. This exciting news creates a long term future for our company and provides security and opportunity for our employees as we expand and place our full fleet into service with United.

As many of you may know, for over 20 years through 2006, Air Wisconsin provided regional airline and ground handling services to United Airlines. Many of our current pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, dispatchers and management employees were part of the team providing those services. We are very proud to be re-establishing our partnership with United and once again serving as a United Express carrier as part of United’s global network. We look forward to providing United’s customers with the safe, reliable and outstanding customer service that is the hallmark of both Air Wisconsin and United Airlines.

I am attaching a letter from Scott Kirby, President of United Airlines, welcoming us back to the United family and outlining the instrumental role of 50-seat aircraft in strengthening United’s network. United is keenly focused on connectivity within its system, and with competitive economics Air Wisconsin is poised to play an important role in that strategy.

We expect our geographic footprint within the United Express network will include hubs in Chicago (ORD) and Washington Dulles (IAD). We are working with United to minimize disruption to our employees and to retain as much of our existing physical infrastructure as possible - including our Milwaukee (MKE), Norfolk (ORF) and Columbia (CAE) maintenance facilities.

Importantly, Air Wisconsin pilots will become eligible to enroll in the United Airlines Career Pathway Program (CPP) which provides qualifying pilots with the opportunity to become pilots for United mainline. As we expand our service for United, our aggressive hiring plans will create fast upgrades for First Officers and the CPP program creates a direct professional pathway into United mainline for all eligible pilots. Our recently announced new hire/first year pay structure and our generous retention payments establishes Air Wisconsin as a premier regional airline for pilots and reflects United’s and our commitment to the long term future and growth of Air Wisconsin.

We will keep you informed and updated as we develop and finalize our plans to transition from our partnership with American into our new partnership with United. Air Wisconsin has had a great relationship over the past 12 years with US Airways/American – and I speak for all of us when I say that it has been a privilege to serve them. I know I can count on all of you in providing outstanding service for American as we complete the remaining term of our flying with them.

I personally want to thank each and every one of you for your loyalty and dedication to Air Wisconsin. I know that the last several months have not been easy for you in the absence of knowledge regarding our company’s future and the anxiety this may have created for you and your families. I along with our leadership team deeply appreciate your professionalism and commitment to proudly delivering an outstanding product each and every day. As we move forward in our new relationship with United Airlines, we will keep you updated on a regular basis and we look forward to working together with you as we embark on this exciting new phase in Air Wisconsin’s future. I am thrilled by the opportunity to announce a new chapter in Air Wisconsin’s proud history! Let’s go!

Sincerely,

Christine

Christine R. Deister

President and Chief Executive Officer

Good for them. A lot of the mid west guys at AWAC are ecstatic I'm sure. Good bunch of guys over there and I'm glad they can continue flying. Anyone know when the contract begins??

Glad to hear. Any chance anyone can post the email?

Does anyone have United's current fleet plan. I'm looking for how many regional jets (50/70/76 seaters) currently operate for UAX. I'm also looking for what scope maximums are. I wonder if these 65 CRJ-200's will be growth, or if they will come at the expense of another operator.

Yessssssssssss!!!!!!!!! I'm so happy for you guys. Very happy to hear you guys will continue flying be able to support your families. Great group of pilots over there. And welcome to ORD.

They are coming at the expense of ExpressJet's loss of 145s

Congrats to you, AWAC pilots.

Most likely from another carrier. Probably swapping 145s from expressjet for 200s or they are coking off SkyWest.

What is the united pathway? Is that flow or interview?

It's an interview. Expressjet, commutair all have it.

Can anyone care to explain how it works? Is it just a straight interview? What's the pass rate?

First you have to pass the Hogan, which is around 80%. Then you have the interview, and this all comes in seniority order. So it may take a while to get to a class date based on this. Overall, I think there was around a 60ish percent pass rate, but you get two shots at the CPP. You also have two shots at getting hired outside of the CPP.

I think you also need a degree, unlike the flow.

Better then the endeavor SSP good for you guys congrats on the new flying!

Kirby letter to United Emoloyee's

Congrats to all Air Whiskey pilots!! After 32 years - 6 airlines and 2 mergers in this industry I understand the angst and stress you guys have been going through. Welcome to the United Family, hope to see you in the right seat flying with me someday soon!

Dear Team,

To be the best airline in the world, there are two "must haves": the best people and the best route network. There's no doubt in my mind that we have the best people. Since joining United I've been consistently impressed by your energy, your enthusiasm and especially your ambition to compete and win.

We have the greatest route network potential in the world, with hubs in the five airports with the highest passenger volumes in the U.S. strengthened by two fantastic hubs at IAH and DEN. But we haven't fully realized the potential of that network... yet.

Despite all of our advantages, what's happened over the past five or six years is United has been shrinking, while our competitors have been growing at our expense. In particular, while we maintained our industry-leading international network, we've been shrinking domestically. In the same time frame, the domestic U.S. market has gone from being a historic money loser to being the most profitable place to fly anywhere in the world - and because we’ve been shrinking, we haven't benefitted in the same manner as our competitors.

This must change. Now, we're going to continue on our journey to become the world's best airline by realizing the full potential of our network. The foundation of any airline is the route network, and we're going to start realizing our network potential in two ways: first, by improving connectivity through our hubs, and, second, by competing and winning in our local hub markets by offering products and flight times that appeal to customers, especially frequent business travelers.

Network connectivity

One of the most important things to make a hub successful is connectivity. The more connections we offer and the higher the percentage of connecting customers we have flying through the hub, the bigger our competitive advantage.

When we add a new route to a hub that brings in more connecting traffic, it brings more customers to all of our other flights at that hub. All of our other flights become more successful, and then we can upgauge flights or add destinations that wouldn't have been profitable before. Those upgauged flights and new destinations, in turn, bring more customers to flow back through the network so we can add a new round of destinations, frequencies and upgauges, and the cycle goes on and on. It's exponential, and it becomes an upward spiral.

As an example, DEN is our most profitable hub today, and that’s largely because it's also our highest percentage domestic connecting hub, which has allowed us to continue to grow there over the past few years.

Another good competitive example of how connectivity helps us compete and win would be a flight from ORD to LAX, where we might have 60 percent of the people on that flight connecting from 35 other destinations. Even if American (AA) offers the same flight, at the same time, if we're bigger and they can only connect passengers from 25 other destinations versus our 35, we'd have an extra 10 to 15 customers for which AA can't compete. That's the difference between a flight that's really profitable for us and a flight that's break-even or loses money for them. And the competitive advantage is even stronger versus low-cost carriers that can only compete with us for local traffic.

Profitable growth is another important way we’ll be adding connectivity to our hubs: For example, every flight we add at ORD results in up to 80 additional possible connections. Another way to add connectivity is to realign the banks of flights. We'll be realigning banks at several of our hubs, including ORD, IAH and EWR, to maximize the total number of connecting flights for our customers.

Competing and winning in our hubs

We also need to compete and win in our hubs by offering local business travelers the customer experience and convenient flight times that will make them loyal to United. This includes upgauging our flights in highly competitive business markets, like between one of our hubs and that of one of our competitors.

A decade ago, from EWR to ATL (Atlanta), we flew eight flights a day on Boeing 737s. Delta (DL) flew 11 flights a day on mainline equipment. ATL is a bigger hub with more connectivity, so its 11 flights versus our eight made sense, but we still had a competitive business schedule for customers that lived in EWR, and when our frequent flyers in EWR wanted to go to ATL, they chose us. By 2013, we were flying six regional jets a day. Guess what happened then? Many of our EWR customers switched to DL, because they didn't want to fly on regional jets and we didn't have the frequency to support their business needs. That didn't just happen in the EWR to ATL market, it also happened in markets from EWR to DTW (Detroit), MSP (Minneapolis), DFW (Dallas/Fort Worth), CLT (Charlotte, North Carolina), etc., and across the board in many of our competitive hub-to-hub markets.

We are going to fix that. By this summer, we'll return to flying eight mainline EWR-ATL flights each weekday at times that are convenient for business travelers. Additionally, summer over summer, we have increased frequencies between ORD and PHX (Phoenix) by three flights and between ORD and MIA (Miami) by two flights. This is something we need to do across the system in competitive markets. It's not going to happen overnight, but this is the path to our future success.

Using regional feed to support mainline growth

At the same time, regional jets play an incredibly important supporting role in our network, because they help us serve small destinations profitably and feed traffic we wouldn't otherwise have into our hubs. The key is using them in the right markets. For example, a regional route from ORD to Rochester, Minnesota (RST) isn't a big enough market to support a mainline aircraft, but our ability to serve that small city with the right size airplane allows us to feed thousands of additional passengers through ORD and beyond.

Regionals are critical to growing connectivity at our hubs, feeding more traffic to the mainline and using that to grow the mainline. Since our regional partners are flying with the United brand painted on the airplane, we have to hold them to the same high standards of reliability and customer service that we hold ourselves to at the mainline. Our current regional partners provide great, seamless service and reliability in feeding today's network. But we have to use them in the right markets, not places like EWR-ATL.

To ensure we have the regional lift to deliver the increase in connecting traffic we need, we are partnering with former United Express carrier, Air Wisconsin (ZW). We expect that ZW will start flying early next year and have approximately 50 regional jets for us by next summer, with the expectation of adding 15 more in the future. They currently fly these aircraft for AA, so this is a great addition for us in two ways: We get to add these additional aircraft feeding small-city traffic into our hubs, and AA loses lift that used to be feeding its hubs. We plan to use these aircraft in the right kind of markets - meaning we'll be adding more small cities - such as RST and COU (Columbia, Missouri) - that can feed additional profitable traffic into our hubs that in turn will help us grow the mainline.

It's important to note that we are not growing our fleet of 50-seat aircraft, but as other partners have upgauged some of our 50 seat aircraft to 70- and 76-seat aircraft, our new partnership with ZW will enable us to maintain a consistent level of flying across our domestic network as we also upgauge and grow the mainline.

What's next?

While United has spent several years shrinking and being a docile competitor, starting this summer, we’re going back on offense! We are going to compete and win across the board in our hubs. That game plan kicked off with a number of new domestic and international flights that went on sale Saturday for flying beginning this summer. In total, we’ve added service to 31 destinations across the U.S. and Europe, including the addition of four all-new destinations: CMI (Champaign, Illinois), COU, RST and STS.
Here's a map of the additional flying we're announcing for this summer:

Map displaying additional flight announcements for
this summer

And here's a breakdown by hub, including the fleet types we're using for each of these new routes:


New
Destinations
New
Markets
Seasonal
Extensions
Frequency
Additions
DEN
COU 1X CRJ
SBP 1X E75
KOA 1X 752
ABQ #5 E70
FLL #2 738
MCO #4 320
TPA #2 739
EWR

SMF 1X 319
SLC 1X 738
ATL #7,8 738
DTW #7 E75
PDX #2 320
IAD


FLL 1X 738
JAX #3 E75
PVD #4 CR7
PWM #3,4 CR7
ROA #3 DH2
IAH

SGF 2X ERJ

ATL #8 E75
CHS #3 E75
ORD
CMI 3X ERJ
RST 3X ERJ
COU 2X CRJ
GEG 1X 320
CHO 1X CRJ
RNO 1X 319
TUS 1X E75
FLL #3 739
RSW #2 738
SFO
STS 3X CRJ
GEG 2X E75
BDL 1X 319
CVG 1X 320
DTW 1X 319
MSY 1X 320
MUC 1X 788
FCA 1X CR7

I’m excited that we are adding flying at almost all of our hubs this summer. While I wish we could realize all of our growth aspirations overnight, it will take several years and we’re prioritizing growth in competitive markets in the near term.
ORD is a great hub and a competitive battleground where we’re going to grow basically as fast as the city can get us gates. With the exception of LAX, all of our other hubs also get varying levels of growth with new destinations and frequencies. Remember the upward spiral: Growing our hubs makes all of our existing flying that much stronger.
We are not adding any additional flying at LAX at this time because we need more gates before we can embark on a growth journey there. We are committed to LAX for the long game - exemplified through our recently remodeled and reopened United Club -- and we’re working hard to secure additional facilities that will give us the ability to compete vigorously. I believe in the future of LAX and its critical role as one of our hubs, and, as we are able to get commitments for more gates, I’m looking forward to growth in LAX.
In addition to our domestic growth, we're also introducing a seasonal SFO-MUC (Munich) flight for the first time. Our joint venture (JV) partnerships are important to United's success, and we need to work cooperatively with our partners to make all of us more competitive. Through these government-approved partnerships, we jointly coordinate our schedules, sales, marketing and customer service to offer our customers many more travel options than we would otherwise be able to provide by ourselves. By cooperating closely and sharing the economic benefits in these relationships, we provide much better access for all customers to the broader networks of both United and those of our important partners. I haven't been shy about telling you and our JV partners, however, that the relationships need to be balanced - both financially and in terms of the amount of flying each airline does. Historically, United has been shrinking while our JV partners have been growing. The addition of this SFO-MUC flight is a down payment on restoring the equity in flying JV routes we all want and deserve.
We have a lot of work ahead to transform our network into the best in the world, but this summer is a great start. In the meantime, as I travel around the system - and I am doing a lot of that - I have never seen a team of aviation professionals working harder, smarter and more collaboratively than all of you to make United the world’s best airline for you, our customers and everyone we serve.
Let's go!
Scott
p.s. I'm sorry for the really long note, but I'm just so excited about the future here at United that I couldn't help myself.

"our generous retention payments establishes Air Wisconsin as a premier regional airline for pilots"

Ummmmm, about that.

Congrats. Glad it was them and not mesa.

Awesome news for AWAC. Congrats guys!!

Woah, this ole boy is petty good. Sounds like he's gonna have United mainline excited they lost flying to an RJ operator. Way to pump up a story about we're bringing in more contractors.
Congrats to AWAC pilots though!

Please stop quoting the entire damned email!

:)

So is this the same number of AC that AW currently fly or is there some
growth involved?

So is AWAC gonna have an ORD base then?
How does the CPP work?

"Since our regional partners are flying with the United brand painted on the airplane, we have to hold them to the same high standards of reliability and customer service that we hold ourselves to at the mainline. Our current regional partners provide great, seamless service and reliability in feeding today's network."

This is BS right here that makes me angry as a Xjet pilot. Both Xjet and RAH have whole pairings built just to cover what Commutair can't because they're such a disaster. Yet they grow and we shrink. UA only cares about cheap.

But AWAC is a good airline, so good for them. You're right, at least it's not Mesa.

If UAL only cares about cheap, why sign with a senior carrier like AW?

Where are these -200's coming from? Is AWAC keeping its current AA flying? From Expressjet, Skywest? Back from the desert? Kinda shows that -200 flying isn't going away. But congrats to the AWAC guys. Glad you can get back near your namesake state.


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AA flying will be over. 65 is the current fleet count for them so it's just a transfer of flying from AA to United.

Great news for AWAC! Now that's even more NH slots at UAL that are spoken for, making it tougher for someone to get hired off the street.


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Actually Kirby is very good. After the merger it was common knowledge at management teams at DAL, AA and others that a combined UAL - CAL had the best hubs and mainline network hands down. But as long as Smisek and his misfits were running the show nothing to worry about. They always said however if UAL ever got solid management they were a massive force to be reckoned with.

Well with Oscar Munoz, Scott Kirby we finally have great management. Others always bring up Kirby and RJ's. Well that's why you have a contact and scope section for and UAL's scope is the best in the industry. Yes we can always improve & tweak and I'm sure Kirby will be difficult to negotiate against.

That being said the UAL MEC was blown away by Kirby's briefing to them at the last MEC meeting and from what I am told that was unanimous from the entire MEC. Given any MEC especially ours that's no small accomplishment. Kirby wants to be number one and is very aggressive, Smisek wanted to be number three to cut expense and run a $hitty airline.

I'll take Kirby any day. Now that the big three all have very competent managements, mergers caused profitable entities & pattern bargaining has raised the bar that's great news for all pilots in the industry!

Because cheap is relative, Compass was paid handsomely for biddding on 20 E-jets for AA, and they have a junior pilot group. AWAC has their backs against the wall, so they could have been willing to negotiate.

DON'T BE FOOLED! Kirby is a Navy guy who didn't fly... He DOES NOT like pilots, period. He loves outsourcing and cheap labor. Why do you think USAirways has so many regional carriers? He's not a dumb guy but he does not care about pilots just $$$.

The only reason XJT continues to shrink is due to the fact that Skywest will not let XJT into the contract negotiations. Skywest has the plan to shut down XJT and that is happening. You need to look at Skywest, not UA for the problems at XJT.

I was being facetious, Kirby is good for United. Getting paid well at a healthy company is always better than than an unhealthy one. Goes to show you the blessing of Oscar's two year extension to your contract. Last thing you would want right now is for Kirby to come onboard mid negotiations.

Don't you work for an airline that has flow (envoy)?

Is it not hypocritical to be complaining about another airline setting up a CPP that doesn't actually even set aside guaranteed spots for the people it is being offered to?

I couldn't care less if Kirby likes pilots or not. As long as he likes the airline the rest will fall into place.

An airline is more than its pilots.

What kind of contract did USAirways have post bankruptcy? Wasn't It the bottom hands down worst industry wide, even compared to all other post bankruptcy contracts?

United and CAL (except Bethune & to a lesser extent Kellner) have had decades worth of terrible management. I'll take competent management anyday. Yes, ALPA has its work cut out negotiating against Kirby. Still I'll take that in a NY second vs. the sorry incompetent management's we've had in our history.

Amen brother!

No worries, I agree!

Are you crazy? Scot and Doug saved 5,000 pilot jobs from liquidation. Those boys are making 300k going into retirement now. They got hosed by an arbitrator nothing else. Scot and Doug built AW, saved US Air, and substantially improved AA from the direction it was heading.

Don't disagree, not sure who to blame more.

Yeah, I agree- the first part of your post sounds like something I'd expect to hear on April Fool's. Apparently, he hasn't met some of the Mesa new hires. Aside from that, there's no need to get angry, just keep working to better your resume, and jump off this sinking ship as soon as possible. It's all we can do, since it's painfully evident that the puppets in Atlanta have zero intention of keeping us open. Give it a day or two, and the merry band of mental midgets from Hartsfield Center Parkway will roll out even more smoke and mirrors in an attempt to keep us from seeing the truth. So, I guess we're going to be scuttling the ORD base later this year?

... Also, congrats to the AWAC folks, it's about time you recieved some good news over there.

ORD is probably done for Xjet. The word I heard is that any base closure would be contingent upon whether AWAC got the rumored United deal, which has come true, and that it would be ORD, not EWR as some speculated.