mcat

UA announced they will be getting rid of 200 single class 50 seat aircraft and only account for 4% of total ORD departures.

“Though United will retire about 200 50-seaters, it will retain about 100 of those aircraft. It plans to deploy these to smaller communities, not between large cities, executives say. At the end of 2020, United’s fleet of 50-seat regional jets included nearly 200 aircraft: 133 Bombardier CRJ200s and 45 Embraer ERJ-145s, according to Cirium data. But United notes that in 2019, before the pandemic, its fleet included some 300 50-seaters.”

https://www.flightglobal.com/fleets/...144355.article

Excargodog

To put that in perspective, that would be the equivalent (not necessarily the actual tactic) of shutting down UAX 50 seat flying at both ZW and C5 OR G7 and OO. Fifty seaters remaining would be confined to the hinterlands. The good news is that there would be pilot growth at mainline. The real question is how much of that pilot growth would be fed by the pilots of the retired 50 seaters…

prt135

Do you have the source?

prt135

G7 50 seaters don’t count; they’re not single class.

mcat

https://www.flightglobal.com/fleets/...144355.article

RabidW0mbat

It’s a double edged sword really. We should all be striving to go to mainline, so in that aspect this announcement is good. On the other hand, if you don’t have a degree, or have skeletons in your closet, perhaps it’s time to lateral to OO. I’m not sure we (zw) exist in 3 years…is there another rabbit left in that hat? Who knows.

Excargodog

Didn’t say they would DO either of those options, just providing examples of the numbers of pilots involved. Basically two regionals worth.

rickair7777

It is. Committing to this career as a civilian is a bit of a crapshoot because majors, for understandable reasons, are historically leery of granting mainline seniority numbers to people who are very young and/or new to aviation... so there's generally that big filter step 5-10 years in. Except at AA.

It would be one thing if you just got stuck at a regional forever and retired from that, but there's too much churn with regionals coming and going for that to be a comfortable plan for most. You really need a side gig to sleep easy at night.

Excargodog

It would be wrong - I think - to believe the economic and other factors that are going to cause United to cutback 200 50 seaters are UNIQUE to United or somehow not applicable to AA. It is entirely possible that ALL 50 seaters are in the same type of trouble and that in the years to come more regionals - including one or more of the AA wholly owneds- will be closing their doors.

Anyone entering this career field and believing Aviate, Flow, CPP, or any of the other bait that is currently being used to keep butts in seats at regionals is some sort of guarantee of a job may get a very rude awakening. At the major level, jobs will always be competitive and at the regional level careers will always be ‘iffy’. Those not competitive at a major may have a career of repeated lateral transfers as one regional after another shuts down with loss of seniority with each lateral move.

3400

I think they meant AA is the exception to not hiring young inexperienced aviators to be (eventually) AA pilots by way of flow. 50 seaters are absolutely vulnerable at AA, if not more so because of the allowance for nearly endless 65 seat RJs in AA scope.