CASMs are still a lot lower on narrowbodies, especially the longer ones. Most regional flying is not done to get lower costs, it's for a variety of other reasons...

- Loads. If you carry up to 70 pax, yes the RJ is more cost effective. Anything over that and one NB is cheaper than 2-3 RJ's.

- Frequency. Customers like frequency... a lot. While one daily NB would be cheaper than 3 RJ's, most of the customers would fly on somebody else with a better schedule. This is key and lots of pilots don't seem to get this, our customers today want a flight within 2-3 hours of what works for them, not a daily milk run, most especially if they have to sit in a hub for a connection.

If you can fill up (to a reasonable load factor) two or maybe three daily NB's, any airline manager in his right will go with the NB's.

- With all that said, if regional flying is under a contract (OO is, no idea for QX), then it would be more cost effective to fly the RJ's since you have to pay for them anyway, and park NB's since you can save money by not operating your own fleet. This is normally an artificial and transient situation which occurs early in a downturn while majors are stuck with pre-downturn FFD contracts... those will eventually get adjusted to make economic sense in whatever future environment comes to pass.

RJ's are not all bad for legacy hub 'n spoke pilots, they're a key part of the business model. Just need some scope to help manage it...

 

Growth and taking advantage during a downturn

I know that growth for Alaaka means, more seats, (not more airframes) more credit cards, and joining an alliance. Just in case anyone wants to know what actual growth looks like.

 

So we complain about small airplanes, and we complain about big airplanes... which is it?

 

🤔 Who’s complaining about big airplanes?

I think the complaint, is that we only have two plays in our game book: Picking low hanging fruit. (Expansion to Hawaii when Aloha fails) and Defense (fending off JetBlue expansion on the west coast, and protecting SEA).

 

Other than all the other news yesterday, it was announced that Alaska will start hiring again late this year and into next year, approximately 200 pilots. Way more than I would have predicted (I didn’t think we’d hire at all this year) but certainly welcome news!

 

Interviewing this year...Classes planned starting second quarter next year. If the west coast comes out of self-imposed political lock down

 

Not holding my breath on any of it. Boeing can’t even keep the MAX from being grounded a 2nd time after the years long grounding.

There is nothing to rely on at the moment.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Latest update on company website is hiring ~250 mainline pilots for summer 2022 capacity. Window opens early July

 

Great news indeed.


Now awaiting the SFO decision...

 

I’m unfamiliar. Are they talking about closing it?