I agree completely about LAS ACL. I was laying over about two months ago (at "the beautiful and non-smokey hotel" :eek:) and walked through the casino at about 9:00 PM on a Friday night. There was not a soul in the casino except for the dealers and some guys at one of the high end poker tables. Two weeks ago, the casino was about half full, the restaurants were open again....and it was MUCH smokier.

Any word on a AE this Summer? I'm hearing that it has been put off until as late as August and will fill the 777's coming the beginning of next year.

I was told late summer, some have been told May. Want to place bets.

Yep - a B747-200 freight operator I used to work at furloughed about 40% last year, but they are recalling now. Business seems to be picking up for them.

Thant's the same thing I'm hearing. Thanks for the reply ACL

With how inefficient the 777 trips are going to be with that ALT-LAX-SYD-LAX-ATL trip in the mix, I am wondering how junior it will go. I am assuming that the B crew will fly the domestic legs, so at least two are going to get long sits in the LAX hotel before and after the SYD turn.

Both 200's used for Military Charters retire in Oct and Nov. ANC is due to close in Dec. There just isn't any money in cargo op's anymore. With all the slots in NRT, we can put extra cargo on 777's. This info came from a meeting in AMS. They also said, expect 3 MD 90's by the end of 09.

Who's to say they won't open a small 777 domicile in LAX to cover the LAX-SYD portion (maybe to be expanded later, just spitballin' at this point, seems it would be of little cost, but what do I know) and do LAX-ATL round trips or the ATL 777 guys do the ATL-LAX turnaround(or short layover if the schedules don't match).

Might be a possibility, but I am not sure if they would want to commit to that right now. I have not heard anything about it.
Fact is that if they were going to do that off the bat there would have been an AE for it already.

At one of the pilot meetings last week in JFK, there was the question (which apparently gets asked a lot) whether a BOS base would be re-opened. The answer was that hotel rooms are cheap in BOS, so there isn't a need to have a base, even if a lot of pilots overnight there.

I got the impression that if a place has high-cost hotel rooms like JFK, it makes it sense financially to open a base. That might be the concept behind moving the 765 base to JFK - since it seems like it's going to operate more out of JFK than ATL in the future.

So - with only one trip out of LAX on the 777 at the moment, I can't see the financial return to having a base. Remember a base also requires having reserves to staff it and the like, which adds to the cost of opening a base.