FlyKTPA

Yes, those markets all arguably have excellent air service, although there’s still loads of unserved nonstop opportunity from all of them. They are all popular midsized to large leisure destinations and/or population centers. I think a lot of people took Neeleman’s plan too seriously. They gotta fill E190s, they can’t be flying Fargo to Lakeland, Memphis to Green Bay etc. They need routes that aren’t too risky. You should be able to fill dozens of routes 2x weekly on an E190 from all those destinations with no, to little competition.

Tpinks

And let the Memeing? (Memming?) begin! Lol

BobbyLeeSwagger

Lol yes exactly.. time to spice up our thread.. jump in folks. Right now APC is 70% political banter, 20% insightful info and 10% intentional entertainment. Let's lighten up and take ourselves a little less seriously.

If you're gonna be serious, be seriously nice

TransWorld

For those rates, pilots will stay at regionals. Flight Attendants will keep flipping hamburgers.

3EngineTaxi

That list doesn’t seem to have too many new “underserved” cities; they mostly seem to be pretty normal destinations. It will be interesting to see how many new non-stop city pairs there will be, or if they will merely do the standard LCC flying from random places to FL.

rickair7777

Always a few who will take a chance on a startup, in hopes of getting in on the ground floor. Especially if you're unemployed.

But a year or two from now might be a different story.

I'm sure they've mixed up the usual strong koolaid about being special, making a difference, and being part of something new and different... some people always drink up.

BeatNavy

I am guessing they are planning on eventually hiring CFIs (and probably partnering with a flight school or two for an ab-initio type program). They have all the applicants they need for now who have E175 time. Eventually though, they will compete with regionals for talent. And then when said CFI guy gets 1000 hours, he will upgrade (prob around year 2-3). Then he will go to a major or cargo carrier around year 3-5. Neeleman might just have a good plan if the goal is to keep the bulk of pilots on 1-5 year pay. Some will likely stay (no degree, seniority, QOL, etc.). But I think he may recognize that placing breeze slightly above a regional will ensure he has enough applicants to fill classes, but ensuring they won’t want to stick around too long. That will assist in keeping a union off property and keep a young, “happy” workforce with lower career expectations, kind of like what he was trying to do with FAs. The low pay and seemingly “non-career airline” aspect is part of the design, not an oversight or miscalculation about the labor market, in my opinion. Even regionals, with their worse pay and work rules, seem to keep most of their people around for 3-5 years minimum, except maybe mil guys. That rate of turnover, with associated lower longevity work force, is probably enough to recoup the extra training costs of that model, especially once they in-house training. Although, two fleets will muddy that a little bit and increase training costs (for every 220 captain that leaves, potentially 4 training events could be triggered), but the 3 year seat lock will mitigate that to some degree. As all the majors are beginning to hire again, they might have an issue holding on to all their initial guys they hired who have all that group II PIC

BobbyLeeSwagger

Completely spot on

rickair7777

He'll need to maintain turnover in the CA ranks... if they get too comfy and stick around then he won't be able to hire FO's since they'll be stuck.

BeatNavy

Maybe. But I think that’s the goal of the low CA wages and terrible 401k. It’s not set up to be a career. That said, they will be steadily growing for quite some time, so I don’t see that as an issue, at least not for a while. But even places with tons of lifers like SkyWest still upgrades people and still gets applicants. Don’t think breeze will ever get to a point where they have only a fixed cadre of left seat lifers. Even the much higher paying LCC/ULCCs lose a chunk of FOs and CAs to legacies and FDX/UPS. Breeze has a long way to go until they are paying “too comfy to leave” wages. I see both churn and growth happening for a quite a while with ample upgrade opportunity. But, we shall see.