think any bases closures?

 

You think RAH could be looking? I could see them wanting to purchase the ticket so they could get the scope to fly the larger E-jets. Any thoughts?

 

Quite possible

 

Nice obscure video game reference. Does anyone know how this would affect flowthrough? Do all AA furloughees have to be recalled before any Eagle guys would be hired?

 

Ohh the flowthrough is such a mess and is now going to arbitration, which wont be good for anyone. I would expect maybe 100-200 AE guys will actually get an opportunity to go if that.

On a more dismal note, I would expect most of the AE flying to be segmented out and sold in the next 4 years. After 4 years I would expect AE to be primarily a ORD and DFW based carrier flying 25 CRJ700s and a few 50 seat 145s. Saabs will be sold, ERJ135/140s will be sold back to Embraer for conversion to legacy jets, Executive will be sold, maybe to Spirit or Jetblue or some carrier trying to make a presence in the Caribbean. Skywest and/or Xjet will do the flying out of LAX, CHQ/Skyw will take a chunk of ORD flying, ASA might get some DFW routes, Air Wisky gets a bunch of East coast RDU/LGA flying.

What makes me think this? AE has a no strike clause that ends in 2012. At that point they will have a top heavy seniority list and be flying very outdated equipment. In order to make AE a competitive carrier someone would have to invest a huge chunk of money in new a/c and somehow get the top 1500 pilots out of the company. Instead of investing all that cash AMR has chosen to sell AE (probably as an IPO), and contract out other regionals to do the flying so that they dont have all their eggs in one basket (think Comair/Delta).

 

Doubtful. All the problems associated with picking up Eagle would be a disaster. My thoughts...Eagle gets spunoff into it's own thing, loses some AA flying since they'll want to diversify and picks up other codeshares to compensate (a la Xjet). I don't see AA looking at the 170, although stranger things have happened.

The days of a regional flying exclusively for one code share partner are over. It's much more beneficial to both mainline AND regional carriers to spread their risk out over multiple companies. I can remember a time where if you said "Pinnacle and Xjet are going to do Delta flying" you'd get laughed off of this board....

As far as the Eagle/AA flowthru...I hate to break it to Eagle guys but that whole thing is a pipe dream. Even if it DOES happen, the people that actually get to flowthru would have been better off getting hired off the street by other legacies (CAL, DAL, etc) YEARS prior when they were qualified to get there.

 

Any airline wanting to do regional flying for AA will be limited by the scope clause in the AA APA contract. AA doesn't want any regional flying equipment with more than 50 or so seats. The few exceptions being the CRJ and the ATR Eagle operates (which by the way, Eagle wanting to exercise options for 50 CRJs was a huge point of contention with the new flow through agreement falling apart).

So if RAH (or anyone for that matter) did ultimately acquire some AA regional routes it would have to be done with something 50 seats or less.

But, I think all of this is a good thing for Eagle though. The EX certificate allows us a lot of freedom to add more routes, more equipment and expand.

 

As long as the Executive Certificate is operating flights for AA under the American Eagle/AA Connection banner, they are subject to the same scope restrictions. If they moved all AA flying onto the AE certificate, then they would be able to operate larger a/c for a different carrier on the Executive cert.

 

Another view on the matter...

http://news.airwise.com/story/view/1196616561.html

This story mentions that an investment group is urging AMR to divest itself of its frequent flyer program. Can anyone provide an explanation of why an FFP is considered a profit center. I would have thought the concept of giving away seats would be classified as a cost center.

http://news.airwise.com/story/view/1196703588.html

 

FFP's can make some money because of marketing with credit card programs. You get mastercard or some one to stick american airlines miles on the card and supposedly people jump on that credit card thinking they will get a free flight. In the end though the rules are such that most people dont even bother trying to turn them in or just build up miles faster than they can get rid of thus making the company money.