silver Saabs, did they have info about COLGAN
 

so here is some thought, do you think the execs at silver knew about the soon to demise Colgan, and that is why they put in for Saabs over this year?? What is the status now of those Saabs? This will be UAL flying I am sure, I keep seeing news articles that say Silver will win out of Colgans loss.

Anyone with half a brain knew that the Colgan Saabs were on their way out, regardless of BK. Made zero sense to keep a pro-rate operation with an aircraft that was serving as a constant training cycle and mx costs that were skyrocketing.

I am more curious about the viability of the new Saab operation with Silver. Will they be able to keep them cost effective with the mx costs/up keep.

Yea I agree with The Juice, it's been coming for a while. I hope that Silver's maintenance on the Saabs is better than the Brasilia they used to have. Apparently the reason the Brasilia were sold is because we couldn't keep them flying. Combine a new aircraft with new maintenance personnel in Gainseville and I wonder how much trouble these "new" planes will give us.

I always hear the Colgan guys talking about how maintenance intensive the Q400s are. Are the Saabs any more robust?

When I saw our first Saab, I thought the thing looked brand new. Then someone pulled up a picture on their phone of that exact plane sitting in the desert before it got painted. I couldn't believe it was still flying...Right now, we have some problems with them. Just operational issues that come down to staffing on the ramp. We just dont have the resources on the ground yet...The Saabs we have now and the ones on the way belonged to Mesaba (no idea if these were once used by Colgan). Our CEO loves the Saab, and I think he used to work for Mesaba when they were smaller. Given the talks of routes we are bidding for, I dont see only 18 Saabs filling all of the flying we are bidding for. I cant see us getting any contracts for flying we dont have the airframes for. I'm sure we will need more. I've heard rumors that they even want to find more 1900s...Maybe they had some sort of idea about Colgan, who knows...

Colgan Saabs had 40,000+ cycles on them back when we actually kept track of the cycles on the MX log, about 3 years ago we stopped. So I would guess that 45,000 cycles is the norm of the Colgan fleet, that is a lot!

MX is a mess on them. If Silver runs their MX department like Mesaba did (see $$$) they may have a fighting chance. If they run it like Colgan, you might as well light them on fire when they show up on the ramp.

And for all of you guys who will be gearing up for the Saab, I have 2 words for you: "Rudder Limiter," have fun with that!

If i'm not mistaken, right now we have guys contracted for the Saab maintenance to get the ball rolling. Not sure what the long term plan is...We just emptied our FLL hangar today, flying everything up to Gainesville.

I've asked this same question in the Silver thread multiple times and no one has even tried to answer. I wish Silver the best, but I cannot figure out how they believe they can make money flying the same routes with the same aircraft as Colgan.

Simple, old Colgan paid peanuts, was profitable and then the new contract comes with a livable wage and boom, not profitable. Silver pays peanuts therefore profit.

Ill be honest, I dont think anyone's answered (including myself) because we're all scratching our heads at this one also. Obviously I hope it'll work out, I just dont know how. I will ask this though, is the Saab a fun aircraft to fly? I'm getting mixed reviews from our guys. Some like actually having a cockpit door behind them, a lav, and the coffee. Other guys just love flying the Beech. Opinions?

Not too sure about that....
According to some older Pinnacle financials:
2007 annual report shows Colgan with a $4.5 million operating loss in 2007.
Also, 10-K for 2008 showed a $7.9 operating loss for 2008.


All of this was available at Pinnacle's Investor Relations site at
Welcome to Pinnacle Airlines Corp. - Investor Relations - Annual Reports

My point being, even with the lesser labor costs of the previous contract and lower fuel costs the operation still lost money.