A lot of elderly 320ceos are either going to be retired or confined to the East Coast is my guess. By the time the merger of the two companies actually occurs, there’ll be well over 100 320 NEOs.

 

He's making an inside BlueJet joke. He's not actually projecting the complete demise of LAS.

 

😂 Yes, for the record I think a LAS base would be smart. The LAX and SFO areas are well covered with direct flights to the east coast, but an America West type of late night LAS “sort hub” to the east coast could work for a lot of secondary/tertiary west coast cities.

Agreed, those older 320ceos will be used to grow the SDQ fortress hub. 23x daily SDQ-STI flights, all departing in the redeye period. 😉

 

Yes the day flying is (when I was still there) almost entirely done by the guys from the east coast. Not sure about the schedules you saw, what I'm seeing for Thurs night this week are available to book through myidtravel:

LAX - JFK 22:55, 23:59

ONT - JFK 23:35 (this is usually built into the LAX pairings starting with a limo/dh to ONT)

LAX - BOS 20:50, 23:45

LAX - BUF 23:15

LAX - FLL 22:04

LAX - MIA 21:50

LAX - EWR 22:32

LAX - BDL 20:45


So that's 10 redeye departures in one night (9 if you don't count ONT, though I limo'd out there to start that sequence 4 times one month.)

Some other pairings will go LAX-SFO-JFK leaving around 1900 from LAX, doing the 2230(ish) departure from SFO. SLC, and LAS, were also built into pairings like that.

Basically with 100 lines in LAX, 10% of your lineholders start a redeye trip on this Thursday night.

At least that's how it was before I retired at the beginning of the year. I can't say things haven't changed, but I'm skeptical that they would have.

 

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Couple years down the road after the spirit acquisition is worked in:

LAX flying SHOULD be a lot better right?

 

Yes, I would think so.

 

Couple years? This must be your first airline merger. Spirit does a LAX PIT redeye so I guess shorter is better

 

I wouldn't hold my breath honestly. Real estate at LAX is valuable and we use it for premium transcon Mint stuff. Schedules will improve from our point of view with a lot of short haul intra-west coast type of flying added (LGB operation was better in this regard). I could see LAS fitting that bill better than LAX.

 

Someone asked about LAX in another thread, so I thought I could bump this one up. Reading through it is mostly still decent info.
Supplemental bid results have junior Captain as a 3/16 hire. Junior FO was a 6/23 hire. At 14 months I’m bidding 67% in the right seat with 25 (of 149 total lines) line-holders and 24 reserves below me.

Still a lot of red-eyes, but the bid package for August had the latest takeoff at 22:34, so maybe the company is backing off from the real late red-eyes, which are rough. Flying is generally easy with many trips with one leg per day.

Company recently approached the union about giving relief from CBA restrictions to open a LAS base, which the union did not entertain. The company could open a LAS base anytime though and the upcoming (1 Aug) annual bud could be the time. A LAS base would be a major seniority shakeup in LAX. We have many (over a dozen) Captains who live there already and many commuters will consider it. Spirit merger would change things much further. Hawaii flying pushed until 2024 or later due to Airbus delivery delays.