Proudly All Boeing?
 

Will Alaska management ever remove the “Proudly All Boeing” off of the 737s nose? As an Airbus driver elsewhere it seems kind of silly since, at least on the surface AK has embraced the BUS and has a mixed fleet. Or is it temporary until they can be replaced by 737s? Now that the fence is down, have any BUS pilots transitioned to the 73? And how many vice versa?

Not sure embraced is the word I’d use for their opinion of the Airbus. Silly anyhow since air group is flying around embraers and dashes as well.

Alaska is days away from announcing a large 737 MAX order....Count to ten after the MAX certification is complete, the buses will be quickly going away. Yes, pilots have transitioned in both directions. Both D-8s and E175s are not flown by Alaska pilots, they are not on an Alaska Certificate, they are regional planes flown by Skywest and Horizon. I can understand your angst but it is pretty simple.

Well I guess the problems with the MAX are solved. You heard it here first folks!


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Anyone who thought the Bus was going to be around after their lease expiration dates either wasn't paying attention or lives in denial.

Why would they do that? SW/AA/UA have to get them back in the air, but they've already acknowledged many pax won't fly on them.

AS would be be better off sticking with "proudly MAX free" for a while until the dust settles. Even though they have no MAXes yet, I bet if they announce they're getting some, it will scare some pax off. In a year the public will have forgotten. They got lucky (or smart) with their timing, why throw that away. Unless they think it will play well to the home-town demographic...

Because dollars. That second MAX crash sealed the Airbus’ fate on Alaska property...

That is why you are a pilot. They did and it’s done. Alaska was rewarded for its loyalty to Boeing when others were running for the exits. We will all be better for it. I honestly don’t think Airbus was ever really in the running though.

Alaska was told by Boeing, that the plane certification process will be completed by the end of June.

If they got a smokin' discount, OK sure.

But I'm a pilot because I choose to be. Has nothing to do with the price of Boeings in China.

How were they rewarded? I thought the deal was done well before the first max went down? Did they go back and renegotiate somehow?

Boeing also told Alaska in April that the software fix was complete and would be certified that week, that was straight from Brad’s mouth. How did that turn out?

Rewarded for their loyalty? I guess that is what the Boeing salesmen said as they shook hands on the deal. They were really thinking, thank God I got rid of a few of these lemons.
As you stated the Airbus was likely done here from the start, and as another poster said the 2nd MAX crash sealed it. It will happen faster now because we can get the worst plane in the Boeing fleet at fire sale prices and on an accelerated delivery schedule as forward thinking airlines around the world cancel orders. Just out of curiosity, why are we all better for it? Without beating the long dead Boeing vs Airbus horse yet again, what makes it better for us, as pilots to have only one fleet? I see it as an obvious cost saver for the company to be single fleet, but I don't see how it helps the pilot group to reduce options.

How many is “large?”

The only thing I can think of is potential for more trading flexibility - the more pilots on the airplane, the more likely it is to find someone to trade trips with, split trips, modify pairings, etc. So in that sense it would make sense to have 3000 pilots on one airplane instead of 1000 pilots on the Bus and 2000 on the Boeing. At least, that would be the case at an airline with 21st century scheduling rules instead of the contract we currently have that allows scheduling to deny absolutely everything.

Hopefully someone can come along and tell me why this last bit of optimism I have about working here in the future is misguided.

That is a valid point. The flip side is that we end up with fewer pilots on the list because fewer are in training for upgrade and equipment swaps at any one time. I seem to remember hearing that something like 10% of delta pilots are in the school house at any one time becuase all of their different fleet types generate a ton of training as everyone bids around. That 10% number is pulled from a very deep place in my memory, and may be way off, but it illustrates a point. As QOL goes, trading flexibilty probably outweighs this....if we had any.

I just hope it’s a 1-for-1 fleet replacement. The last thing we need is 73 Buses to be replaced by an order of 50 MAX10s because it’s more seats overall and represents growth to air group.

Agreed, at previous places of work the aircraft with the most routes had increased flexibility etc.

I’m sure you know the answer to this, however I appreciate your optimism.

God this airline continues to disgust me. Excited to fly the death machine. Highly doubt this will be a 1 for 1 trade. Seeing as this joke of an airline is getting destroyed in the trans con market (ps virgin never struggled hmmm?), they are probably itching to reduce the fleet count.

But hey congrats coworkers, we won our 12th jd power yesterday. Never mind that we actually came in third, by a wide margin, but due to technicalities of jd powers judging criteria JetBlue and southwest aren’t our competitors??????! They are only our competitors in real life and the ones beating us across the country and in California, soon to be Hawaii too.

Congrats guys and gals, we are the Number 1 ranked 3rd place airline!!!’nnn

F this place.

Dude....
Relax. It’s only a job.

Lol, jeez.

We could use a guy like you on the snack basket committee

Compass guy spotted

These snacks need more salt #salty


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There's a few around.

I think they are planning on keeping at least the neos until the leases expire, which I thought was about five years.

Is that old info? Did I miss something?

Also if you read it carefully it says Boeing, Proudly all Boeing. So I think a lawyer could make the argument that it's not false advertising.

We need the Compass input! No one is more well versed in snack baskets. Industry leading snack baskets 2020!

There was a time when our snack baskets were weak and not fitting for even the regional level.. Our committee suffered and fought to put an end to the tactics of a greedy out of touch management that flooded our baskets with stale snacks and no-name knock offs.. I mean, choco-whiches? When we deserved oreo minis?

We were successful when we locked arms and refused to allow the snack basket in the flight deck, like we normally do, until changes were made. When management saw our unity, they crumbled (pun intended).

Hoping the same for Alaska 2020. You guys deserve it!

They also said that artificial sweeteners were safe, WMDs were in Iraq, and Anna Nicole married for love!

Good thing we’re going to announce a big order and they’ll be flying by the end of the month.
U.S. regulators say some Boeing 737 MAX planes may have faulty parts
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-faa-airplane/u-s-regulators-say-some-boeing-737-max-planes-may-have-faulty-parts-idUSKCN1T30RX

Check back August 9th... tell me what you think of them 🍎 ‘s

Well not exactly days away.
“Alaska is days away from announcing a large 737 MAX order....Count to ten after the MAX certification is complete, the buses will be quickly going away. Yes, pilots have transitioned in both directions. Both D-8s and E175s are not flown by Alaska pilots, they are not on an Alaska Certificate, they are regional planes flown by Skywest and Horizon. I can understand your angst but it is pretty simple”.

Petty quibbling (is that redundant?)

MEA is our resident prophet who routinely declares the end is nigh. Max out your credit cards, sell your Airbus stock, and on the stroke of midnight on __ date, we all drink the Eskimo Kool-aid together.

I think this is the 3rd or 4th time he's done this. :rolleyes:

This forum is llike a soap opera. You can turn it off for weeks and when you tune back in you can pick up where you left off!!

The bus's will no doubt be gone some day. They purchased new interiors that obviously are for boeing aircraft. Seats are narrower. First Class seats look like they bought them at walmart. When we turn in the aircraft they will take out new interiors and replace with old Virgin stuff then hand them over to the bank! Then put the new interiors in the max aircraft.

And you can take that to the bank!

One minor change. My prediction is that the VA tails won't even leave the state of Washington before big D starts flying them against AS.

As far as I can remember, MEA has never been wrong. He is indeed a prophet. He does not declare the end is nigh. He simply tells the truth about inside information that he has access to and is willing to share. His posts are the only thing a guy can take to the bank from this forum. I enjoy reading what he has to say because it is a bit like looking into future. Like I said, to the best of my knowledge, he has never been wrong.
My experience with this company would also lead me to believe that the Bus will go as quickly as possible, but I imagine the process will take many years. That is just my opinion. MEA has probably been in a meeting actually discussing such things!
The bigger question for Alaska pilots in the future is this. Who is going to fly the State of Alaska and what aircraft are they going to use to do it - once the 700 NG is retired in a few more years?

That is not an unreasonable prediction. I spend a lot of time in the Delta training center these days and there's a lot of pilot chatter about where they're going to get the Buses they covet.

He was wrong about the Airbus displacement last year to be effective this year. Instead, the company (smartly) opened up a big bid to close before the Dec 1st seniority list effective date.

But this isn’t really prophetic. It’s obvious they prefer and have always loved Boeing. If one had to take a gamble in Vegas, I’d put money on returning to an all Boeing fleet. They’ve publicly announced the decision is due before the year ends so August isn’t a bad guess.

As much as I love the airbus, i'm not opposed to an all boeing fleet. I just don't want it to be all 737s.

I feel like the court of public opinion is gonna kill off the MAX well before boeing or the feds try to do it. I'm curious to see if they can win back the hearts and minds of the panicked.

That said, I am super curious how the 797 announcement goes at the Paris Air Show this month. Especially now that airbus will announce the A321XLR. 4500/5000 mile range on one of the most fuel efficient aircraft in the industry could very well be a massive game changer.