Maybe they're planning on hiring for the 330's whenever they come as well. Any guesses when that will be?

 

Source?

Filler….

 

You're asking for the source of speculation/rumor in a post to a discussion forum made by someone who isn't employed by the company? I'd say the source is the one who posted it. Or maybe it comes from some HALaska pilots who asked one of our jumpseating pilots if ABX had started training people in the A330 yet.

That said, it's no secret that ABX is doing preparatory work for adding the A330 to their certificate in order to minimize the startup time once they have a committed customer. It seems unlikely that they would spend time and money on doing that unless somebody out there had expressed some serious interest, but maybe it's just that the new ownership has more of a forward-looking spend-money-to-make-money view. It is my considered opinion that it will happen sooner or later, but at this point there is nothing out there that puts a date certain on the arrival of A330s on the ABX certificate.

 

I ask because our 330 Amazon pilots had the highest W2s in our system with lots of soft time. Alaska management is trying to renegotiate the contract and they go from “it’s not working for us,” to “we are making great progress with Amazon” every other week. They also state Amazon loves us, but it doesn’t sound mutual for both companies bottom line.

 

if it happens it happens. I mean thats just the nature of the game. They wouldnt start the process unless they had a strong indication that someone would want it but until the first route is flown I wouldn't count on the 330's being here, thats just the nature of acmi especially. Now i wouldn't be surprised to see cargo leave Alaska, not sure ow much sense it makes to keep the 330's jsut for cargo and for how long. As per cost, I would think Alaska is losing money on that but thats just a guess with no evidence to back.

 

Atlas bailed on their AMZN flying because of the low margin. AMZN, like DHL, will most likely try to bring on another ACMI provider so they can play the whipsaw game between carriers.

 

We’ve been told that Amazon is starting to understand they are running out of airlines to whipsaw as race to the bottom is costing them in other ways (operationally). So it makes sense to not have all their eggs in one basket, but not purely out of brutality.

 

The Amazon contract was also JDs personal project to cash out of the business. The terms were insane and I bet no-one agreed to the same terms as Atlas did.

 

With new hires supposedly coming in how long do you think upgrades will take? How long for a line?

 

I think that depends on the a330 to be honest, that could change a lot of things if it’s more than a rumor