so.....who will shut the doors first, Comair or Mesa?

 

How any regional fares under the Delta system will depend on performance. Delta has stated over and over again that regionals that fail to perform will not see growth and contracts will be terminated if possible. If you look at operational statistics they are sticking with this. The one airline that has performed very well has seen nice growth. The others have not been so lucky.

 

WRONG

Airlines that Delta likes takes precedence. Comair had the best performance year of it's history in 2008, and things are worse than ever.

 

Yeah! What you said!
Comair had the best year in it's history, with more 100% completion days ever...and things are looking worse by the minute

 

2008 just ended. You site one statistic. The changes you speak of would have been based on 07 and earlier data. Here is a summary of 07 for comair.

""Comair (oh) Ontime performance dropped from 73.8% in 2006 to 67.9% in 2007. Comair denied boarding performance worsed from 2.47 in 2006 to 3.17 per 10,000 passengers in 2007. An increase in the rate of customer complaints to 1.44 per 100,000 passengers in 2007 from .63 in 2006 was near the industry average of 1.42 for 2007. The mishandled baggage rate of 11.40 per 1,000 passengers in 2007 is higher then the industry average rate of 7.01 bags per 1,000 passengers but better then their 2006 of 11.98. Overall, Comair had the third worst AQR score (-3.78) of the sixteen airlines rated.""

From the reported statistics on key areas it does not look like Comair overall will have improved this performance much in 08. I suspect the overall ranking will be about the same.

 

Do you think the "Freedom" 900s were awarded to Freedom based on performance, then awarded to Comair based on performance, then awarded to Pinnacle based on performance, then awarded to Mesaba based on performance, then awarded to ASA based on performance?

How does Delta change their mind 4 times in six months if performance is the primary criteria they're using?

In my opinion, performance is further down the list when Delta starts playing favorites with their DCI menu.

 

DAL is only looking for the best deal...BH at ASA gave it to them with the trade-off of those "inefficient" 50's in a 2-for-1. It's really that simple.

 

And now it looks like Penuckle is going to furlough. I gather from another thread. Nobody is immune, regardless of your performance.

 

Many things go into a decision to award flying. Delta is trying to shift some flying back to the mainline. They are reducing the overall number of connection aircraft. From a pilot standpoint losing 2 50 seaters to one 90 seater is a bad deal. Jobs are lost. From a management standpoint its the plan for the future. Performance is still the key factor in who long term gets the flying. The one airline that has really made out well in this has always done a good job. One thing Delta tracks is the number of passengers a airline causes to misconnect. This is a key stat. A misconnect is very very expensive to the airline. ASA was last in this statistic prior to their sale and Comair was a close runner up. If Comair had been the top performing regionial in the Delta system the last 4 years the fleet makeup and size would be very different there. Delta would have also benefited since they own Comair and the value of their asset would have been way up. They would prefer to award the flying to Comair. They can't afford to do it if they are not going to get the passenger to their connecting flights.

 

Thats all fine and good. How many other carriers have a significant amount of flying out of JFK? I'll put our pax connection numbers out of CVG with anyone. If delta is making decisions on our future based on JFK numbers, (which have gotten better) then they either biased against Comair or terrible managers. The jury is still out on that question.