DonConsult67

Out of business.


The combination of flying an airplane the traveling public hates, an airplane which is fast becoming the bastard child, steadily rising fares, and the problematic demographics of regional airline staffing will hasten AW's demise.


The niche market for the CRJ-200 is dying as evidenced by the hastened retirements of these POS airplanes by SkyWest, Endeavor, and PSA.

Cessnaflyer1213

An interesting question indeed ... this company is one of the oldest left in the regional industry. That says something about their past, but what does it say about the future? Sears was a retail giant for decades, what's happening to them?

The Beech 1900 and Dash 8's used to rule the regional skies. The CRJ 200 effectively retired them. Now, the E170/175's are here and possibly the new C series. More passengers, better fuel economy, higher per seat mile profitability, 2 class seating, and higher passenger satisfaction. I believe these airplanes will retire the CRJ 200s in the next 5-10 years.

Will AW acquire new aircraft and evolve with the times? They have in the past. I doubt they will simply close the doors and put the planes, equipment, gate slots, and routes to auction. It's worth much more as a profitable entity. Merger or acquisition target have better chances than simply closing the doors. There's also a better chance of simply adding CRJ 700/900 than getting new E175's. Transition training is easier and CRJ parts are familiar for maintenance.

The lack of vision and direction at the line level does make it a frustrating company to work for. It leads to the negativity you read on these "***** boards". It feels like they barely know how to keep heads above water tomorrow, let alone a 3-5 year goal. I would like to see the company grow and evolve, but actually making it happen is much, much harder.

Soxfan1

I no longer view the fleet of paid off CRJs as our most valuable asset though it is an advantage. It’s now the 550 typed airline pilots in a tight job market that will only get tighter. So no matter what happens there is a value in that seniority list to AWA that could factor into our future in keeping us in business. That said the main factor that drives our future is this:

Scope.

It’s everything. Yes the public hates 50 seaters. Yes the finance on them doesn’t look great with higher oil. But UAL can have up to 300 of them and it looks like UA pilots will not cave on scope (rightfully so) so I don’t see any other option for UA. UA can’t just chop 300 50 seat aircraft out of their system - It’s about half the UAX fleet or a quarter of the total UA / UAX fleet. So AWAs future is tied to UA ALPA holding the line on scope. And I see them doing just that. And since AWA owns its own 50 seaters, unlike some other UAX 50 to 76 seat carriers, we are in a better position to keep flying a chunk of that 50 seat market that UA can’t not have.

So since this thread is a guessing game and predicting 5-7 years out in this industry is about as accurate as a 14 day weather forecast, I’ll give it a go:

4 years remaining on current deal will be extended to 6. Then extended again for x years after that, covering the 5-7 in question. That is again if scope stays as is.

DarkSideMoon

They can’t add 170’s or 7/9’s unless we take flying from another regional, which is doubtful given our atrocious performance compared to the rest of the UAX stable unless we can actually staff.

tonsterboy5

for the last 3 months we have had the best or very close to the best performance. After the summer melt down and a cutback on flying paired with increased hiring our performance is back on top.

DarkSideMoon

Because united cut our flying back. We’ve grown by maybe 25 people this year. We still can’t staff the promised number of airplanes. If we ever get back up to full staffing and still have those numbers I’ll believe United might reallocate some larger aircraft.

Cessnaflyer1213

It becomes a question of capacity. I'm sure you have noticed, but there aren't too many flights under 46 passengers. If you need to move 150 people and have a hard time hiring pilots, would you rather have 3 flights of 50 people or 2 flights of 75? With limited resources in the form of landing slots, gates, and pilots the only way to satisfy higher passenger demand is by increasing seats with larger aircraft. But ... it's an economic gamble. What happens when the economy goes bad? If you only have 35 people that want seats, would you rather have an old 50 seater that's paid off or a new 75 seater with a big loan payment? The airline industry is notoriously tough to make money in .... We don't have to take away anybody's flying, the demand is there. Some of these out stations would simply have 1-2 fewer flights but more passengers per load. The company can actually deliver a greater lift capacity with 50 - 75 seat aircraft than 65 - 50 seat aircraft. And .... the current 550ish pilot corp would fully staff it.

flightlessbirds

But UAL is maxed on large RJ scope and their pilot group isn’t going to give Kirby more scope. UAL doesn’t want a new small Narrowbody (A220, E190, etc) to unlock more large RJ scope.

Also frequency vs aircraft capacity isn’t as clear cut — schedule matters and UAL’s advantage on connecting traffic vs AA might end up including having better schedules for connecting feed (higher frequencies). Make the regional connections too difficult or long waits at hubs and folks might increasingly opt to drive to the hub (where LCC are more of a threat and ticket margins are more competitively assigned).

DarkSideMoon

Educate yourself on what scope means. Not trying to be a jerk but once you read up on it you’ll see my point better.

Cessnaflyer1213

From Flight Global magazine, "The scope clause in United's contract with the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) limits it to 255 large regional aircraft, defined as ones with up to 76 seats and a maximum take-off weight (MTOW) of 39,010kg (86,000lb), and a cap of 450 regional aircraft when the contract becomes amendable in January 2019.

The Chicago-based carrier had 494 regional aircraft, including 235 large regional jets and 238 jets with up to 50 seats, in its feeder fleet at the end of 2016, its latest fleet plan shows."

You are right, it's a factor. Noboby can grow without addressing that. Thanks, but I understand scope. According to these numbers, there's room for 30 large RJs somewhere. Didn't UA recently announce they were buying 25 E175s? I'm sure ZW, and every other contractor, are in some kind of competition for the planes. I'm sure it will be an interesting negotiation soon. Kirby and the UA MEC have already started their war of words. We'll see what the future holds ....