Future of the three WO's?
 

Envoy Air
140/145 15 (Trans State to Envoy)
140/145 75 (Just a guess, anyone know the actual number?)
175 20 (Compass to Envoy)
175 44 + 10 + 15 + (61 Options) = 130
Total 240

PSA Airlines
200 35
700 22 (Envoy to PSA)
700 39
900 54 + 15 + (15 Options) = 84
200 -35 (Retirement)
Total 145

Piedmont Airlines
145 13 (Envoy to Piedmont)
145 4 (Envoy to Piedmont Assuming they can staff 4 more)
145 43
Total 60

Total WO Aircraft 445

SkyWest
700 39
700 12 (ExpressJet to SkyWest)

Mesa
900 64

Republic
175 85

Total Regional Aircraft 645

CRJ 700 112
CRJ 900 148
ERJ 140/145 150
ERJ 175 235

112 + 148 = 260 CRJs
150 (-45) + 235 = 340 ERJs
45 ERJ140/145s Retire
600 RJ's Max Based on Scope

Contract Expires
Compass (End of 2019, Probably going to Envoy)
SkyWest ???
Mesa ???
Republic ???

Thinking this is the future of the three WOs and the other three left assuming Compass goes to Envoy. If Piedmont could figure out how to recruit like PSA, then they could take all the 140/145s, Envoy be all 175, and PSA all 700/900s. Maybe in the future we would see Piedmont and Envoy merge and have SkyWest and Mesa CRJs go to PSA? Republic then goes to Envoy? This is very long term, maybe within the next 10 years? What do you all think?

I think the question for the next decade is pilot supply. If pilot labor costs double or triple over historical norms, what happens to the business model?

Incentive to increase R&D into single pilot ops?

No - just and incentive to shift some flying to mainline and drop the smaller planes. If you need to shrink to 1/2 the size of today, you jettison the least profitable half of your flying.

I think the trend looking out over the next 5-10 years will be less and less regional flights as the market for pilots to fly the rj’s tightens further. It’s already starting to get, “interesting”. More mainline flying is good for all of us long term.

You have way too much time on your hands.

Not as I see it.

That would require a whole different generation of aircraft.

Also, almost all the gains in safety made since the concept of CRM since the early 80s are attributable to two pilots being present and actively participating. I don’t think any datalink technology will allow that for quite some time.

Single pilot probably seems like a good idea to idiot politicians and uppper mgmt. It seems like an awful idea to those of us who see how often small problems are fixed using CRM-before they can become big problems.

I also think the subject of datalink is a very misunderstood subject. A very high grade avionics suite would be required-and it would have to be absolutely bulletproof.

That link would be the biggest, juiciest target ever for hackers.

I agree completely, I said that mostly as tongue-in-cheek.

The willingness of Airbus to buy into Bombardier and the desire of Boeing to buy into Embraer suggests to me where they think this is going. Bigger, more capable, but more fuel efficient per seat mike "RJs such as the C-series and E-2s are going to be flown in the niche where they make the best economic sense, either by mainline as their low end equipment or by independent "regionals" who will not be bound by scope clauses to the big four.

One could envision a medium-sized city network (perhaps Jeff Bezos will create Amazon Prime Air?) with tickets sold exclusively online and no real codeshare obligations at all. Look what LYFT and UBER have already done to mass transit and taxi services. The future is going to see bigger changes than we would believe. I mean, who would have imagined five years ago that the regionals would be competing with higher pay and hiring and retention bonuses for a diminishing number of nominally qualified newbie FO applicants?

Why bully him?

Lyft and Uber are dependent on an essentially inexhaustible reserve of drivers and cars that go unused 23 hours a day and can enter and exit the market near-instantaneously at near-zero cost. I don’t see any aviation parallels there.

Yep we'll have more issues then the WO's. We retire over 650 pilots next year. The fact that number will go up each year and it seems we can only train about 650 a year is a much more of a problem to deal with.

I think eventually the WO'ed pilots will be frozen at there airlines however at the same time be given a seniority number. It will be interesting how this goes over in the next 4-5 years.

Well oil just crossed $70. Highs prices help some of our business (Midwest and south fracking areas now have more money) but hurt overall. So far revenue is not increasing along with costs.

So, it doesn't bode well.

Compare our latest quarterly numbers with SWA, they earned more and had 1/2 the airplanes in their fleet.

Unfortunately Doug has hitched our business model to the expensive CASM RJ.

Higher fuel costs help us against ULCC, as their fares rely on their low Ex fuel CASM. So, higher fuel prices hit them harder than they do us. We will be fine. Maybe Dougie will have to only buy back $1 billion in shares this year. Rough life.

First your comment doesn't make sense. Ex fuel CASM is CASM minus fuel (excluding). Their fares rely on total overall lower costs than competitors. Spirits ex CASM actually decreased last quarter and is forecast to continue dropping.

Their margins go up as we have to raise prices to cover fuel increases.

Anything that was even near to needing a good connection is still a challenge. We have pretty good GPS, but that is one way and we must have at least five signals. How many times does your wifi/cell/sat lose connection?

I’m not nearly as worried about oil prices this time around. The U.S. is probably going to become the biggest producer and exporter of crude this year according to forecasts, and there are a ton of fracking wells and operations that were bought up by investors when the price dropped, just waiting for the time to be right to start pumping again. OPEC screwed themselves by keeping the price so high for so long, and now we have the excess capacity in reserve. The biggest issue is going to be the labor shortage of pilots. (#WKTWH Mr. Glass, and told you as much in bankruptcy.) The zero to hero program started by AAG is an indicator that they are finally admitting the size of the problem. It takes several years to train someone and get them their hours now. Although they will try to hold on to the cheaper labor regional model for as long as possible, sooner or later either they will be forced to place a large group one order at mainline (or transfer 175’s to mainline), or they will need to make the WO regionals the ONLY way to get to AA if they want their regional feed staffed. Merging in the WO’ed airlines to AA would only be their final, last option if everything else they tried had failed. They simply don’t want to give up the pay differences among all the work groups, and lose their whipsawing ability.

What the hell does "whipsawing" mean? :confused:

Divide and conquer. Pit Envoy/Piedmont/PSA against each other fighting to please Mainline rather than allowing them to join forces to bargain as a single, powerful entity.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Envoy_Air

Though I hate quoting Wikipedia, know your history, or maybe you do and I missed the joke!

It's when your girlfriend turns down your offer to do her backside and you simply tell her that you'll do her sister and her sister just smiles with the grin of the devil.

That sounds dangerously fun!

Until she tells you afterwards that she has herpes.

Isn’t what you describe Southwest Airlines?

Don’t forget Doug said we will always turn a profit from here on out....so we’ve got that.