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ABX Parks another 767?

Old 01-06-2020, 09:09 AM
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I heard another 767 is being parked? N798AX. The shrinking fleet!!
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Old 01-06-2020, 10:04 AM
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Poor guys. A rudderless ship.
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Old 01-06-2020, 12:06 PM
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I know the ABX pilots have had a lot of complaints about being overworked (at least per the union press releases and websites) and wanted management to dial things back in terms of overwork. Will this help with that? How bad is the overwork situation at ABX currently?
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Old 01-06-2020, 12:11 PM
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12-16 guys/girls on reserve list with 4-5 trips in open time every day. We gave away almost all of our charter contracts. So go figure. Team Soap at it’s best.
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Old 01-06-2020, 01:50 PM
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For those that can and do actually read...This is not a Union thing; never has been. The company, and its parent company, decide when, where, how, for whom, what contracts, jets go here, jets go there. Unions <plural> are not invited into the meeting rooms for those discussions.

N798AX is a -200 who has reached a cycle limit. The aircraft either has to have expensive maintenance performed or be scrapped. With today's market there isn't a viable option for the a/c at this time; therefore it will be taken out of service and most likely scrapped for parts and beer cans. If it gets replaced, the decision will be made from above (although it's not anticipated to be..).
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Old 01-07-2020, 12:43 AM
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Originally Posted by abxflyr View Post
For those that can and do actually read...This is not a Union thing; never has been. The company, and its parent company, decide when, where, how, for whom, what contracts, jets go here, jets go there. Unions <plural> are not invited into the meeting rooms for those discussions.

N798AX is a -200 who has reached a cycle limit. The aircraft either has to have expensive maintenance performed or be scrapped. With today's market there isn't a viable option for the a/c at this time; therefore it will be taken out of service and most likely scrapped for parts and beer cans. If it gets replaced, the decision will be made from above (although it's not anticipated to be..).
To add to this, management has been saying in their financial filings and on their investor calls for more than a year that they would be having to retire 798AX this year. The retirement has nothing to do with how much business ABX does or does not have.

During Peak, every available ABX ship was gainfully-employed, and they ran 798 right to her LOV, which is 50,000 cycles. They repainted her as recently as March 2019, and she spent a week at ILN for some TLC the same month. She operated as a spare since March and then stepped up the pace in Peak. She ran pretty-reliably right to the end.

As you probably know, while it is technically-possible to fly an airframe once it hits the LOV, by putting it on a special FAA-approved maintenance program, I don't know any operator anywhere that would do that with a 767-200. It's not financially-viable and there are plenty of frames out there that can be substituted. ABX does put the money in to keep these older frames going: as an example, 740AX is the oldest 767-200 still flying anywhere in the world. It's Line Number 6, delivered in March 1983, and ABX gave it 4 months of heavy maintenance this past year, including a lot of sheet metal work and, later, a repaint. And even it has maybe 7000 cycles left before it hits 50k. The highest-time 767-200 at CAM still has like 3500. And CAM has two 767-200 lease returns parked in maintenance that could be put at ABX if ABX needed them. So, sadly, 798 will indeed be beer cans and spare parts relatively-soon.
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Old 01-08-2020, 02:00 PM
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ABX keeping a plane from purchase to 50K cycles is pretty darn impressive.
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Old 04-03-2020, 10:56 AM
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Will ABX getting any of the parked 76’s from AA? I read that ATSG will be getting them.
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Old 04-03-2020, 06:21 PM
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Originally Posted by HighWingingIt View Post
Will ABX getting any of the parked 76’s from AA? I read that ATSG will be getting them.
They buy everything they can get their hands on...including AA airframes over the yrs. Can't see that stopping now..
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Old 04-04-2020, 09:04 PM
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Originally Posted by HighWingingIt View Post
Will ABX getting any of the parked 76’s from AA? I read that ATSG will be getting them.
ATSG (CAM) made a deal with Jetran a year or so ago to have the right to buy essentially all of the future-retiring AA 767-300s. ATSG has been methodically acquiring them within a few months of AA flying each to the desert, and supplementing the volume going through conversion with onesies-twosies from other carriers, like ANA Cargo and LATAM. CAM currently has seven 767-300s in TLV in various stages of completion, with an ex-LATAM tail going over in a couple of days. There are four AA aircraft now in the desert, three of which CAM already has purchased. There will likely be a substantial wave of AA 767 retirements coming in the next month or so; those will likely sit while CAM works its way through the conversion process, given the finite capacity of IAI/Bedek, which has been the exclusive conversion house for ATSG and CAM. Last I looked, AA had 15 767-300s still in their fleet, although that's a very fluid situation right now. Once AA retires them, they're CAM's to take if it wants them. It didn't cost CAM too much for the option to buy, and so what it does is actually buy and pay for and reregister them within a couple of months prior to sending them to TLV.

Some of the conversions will certainly be going to Amazon, although there is also demand from other potential dry-lessees. So far, ABX hasn't flown any 767-300s for Amazon. There was some talk that, following the walkout, they wouldn't be getting any more Amazon planes to fly, but the reality is that they're already essentially flying more routes than can be covered with the six Amazon-leased 767-200s. If the company ever ends up with labor peace, which seems like it would be difficult but in no way impossible if the company decided to bury the hatchet, I don't see any reason why more Amazon frames couldn't be flown by ABX. They do a good job.

DHL, on the other hand, is treating ABX the way a drunk, ****ed-off girlfriend would, making a show of snogging with some of the nastiest, smelliest carriers from the wrong side of the airport rather than giving more routes to ABX.

Last edited by wjcandee; 04-04-2020 at 09:20 PM.
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