Either way, ugh. Not how I want to see it go down for QX. Hopefully its temporary if it does end up happening.

I will say it seems like the amount of flying announced and coming online for AK soon will necessitate more airplanes to complete. I thought someone posted that our next (announced) AK 175 delivery wasn't supposed to take place until mid next year. Isn't all the new flying supposed to begin by early 2018? There is defiantly a piece to the puzzle missing.

 

Welcome to mushroom land.

 

KSAN domicile is growing in November so I bet it arrives late October which would be consistant with redirecting a QX acft already configured for QX.

The wheels are off of the QX wagon, it is on fire and burning down. They are already losing AAG money and even with the bonuses, I don't see how they can catch up on staffing. I believe that their experiment with the 175 will come to an end by the end of next year, if not by next summer. Another summer like this last one and AAG will pull the plug.

 

And BOI is growing...

 

Plenty more fodder for QX to rightfully upset, but Alaska doesn't operate under a capped number of RJs.
They can expand as desired and the delay maybe only a delay. Alaska has all the cheap tools they need to turn QX around quickly.

 

I would invite you to look at the AAG financial reports, specifically under regional flying. Last year OO generated a pre-tax profit of about $93 million with only 15 airplanes on average. Horizon only generated $23 million with 54 airplanes and that was before the new TA and bonuses. So far this year they have been losing about $9 million per quarter.

At some point, someone at AAG is going to ask why are they doing this, spending tens of millions only to lose money and drag down the brand image. Why not simply make a phone call to SGU, sign a contract and make hundreds of millions.

The only question is when.

 

SKYW stock is now over $42. Hmmm? All time high.

 

The Qx numbers are probably not accurate in the slightest. As its been said before, Alaska and Horizon are owned by AAG and they transfer/shuffle/launder money around as needed to appease investors and the BOD. They will never tell us how much profit we actually make, unless it serves their purpose (i.e. saying 'Look! We lost money! We're unprofitable! You pilots need to take concessions or else)

 

In the world of the SEC. I doubt the numbers are “cooked”...

 

GAAP would require that they be treated the same. I used to work at an airline that would "shuffle" money between entities. I'll just say that the owner died right before he was to be indicted. That airline and the associated companies are no more.

Cooking the books to make Horizon look worse on the SEC financials would only make the shareholders ask the above question sooner; "Ahh, why are you doing that, because it looks you are wasting my money."

I my former life, at the aforementioned airline, I sat in on meetings where the entire executive agreed on a course of action that was quite obviously a stupid idea that could never work. It failed miserably.

Most likely, AAG saw how profitable OO is for them and someone put forth the idea that if they could just transition QX to 175s that they would also be a cash cow. Executive groupthink said, 'Sounds like a good idea.' A decision was made without much analysis and here we are. Eventually, and pretty soon, reality will rear it's head and someone will say, 'This is stupid. This is a waste of time and money. Why are we doing this?' and that will be the end of jets at Horizon.

Perhaps it has already happened.