Quote:
Originally Posted by papacharlie
So it seems like oil prices are going to keep getting higher and higher...so my question is, how will this affect the hiring on the regionals this year?
I know that xjt reduced around 20% of the branded flying this month.
This is a major concern for the airline industry. Most aviation analysts are saying that the regionals with a lot of 50 seat RJs are going to be in trouble unless they start to unload those smaller jets and replace them with bigger ones. But, at the same time, majors are rethinking their strategy on using RJs with this crazy fuel price. They need to go to at least 100 seat jets to spread the cost and RJs aren't cutting it. There's the scope clause, which is a good thing so they can't go any bigger than 76 seat RJs for the regionals.
There's bound to be a major shakeup in the regionals, and some may not be around when all the dust settles. My guess is that this is one of the reason why NWA is trying to merge with DAL, and if that happens, NWA/DAL will probably try to consolidate their regional flying and distribute them between XJ, XJT, Compass, Skywest and Comair. Don't know about XJT but XJ is planning to hire another 300 or more in 2008. This could change overnight, of course, if this oil price keeps going up.