Oh I can imagine 3 round trips FLL TPA a day. Or 4 day pairings with 18 legs. Or never flying longer than 500 miles.

And it takes time and brainpower to bring a new frame on property. Proving runs, LCA program, mx program etc etc. These guys can’t get the scheduling phones manned or anticipate known summer weather patterns, I think they’d have their hands full getting a new frame here.

My bet is they’ll keep adding 320’s 3-5 at a time.

 

I don’t know when people are going to realize we already fly regional jet type routes. 80% of the east coast flying is less than 2 hours.

An A220 would not be relegated to 45 minutes block shuttle duties, that’s now where it makes money. It will do the same routes we already do on a 319 but burn less gas. It will make seasonal routes profitable to operate for more time. It can do long and thin routes between our vacation cities like MSY and FLL and MCO and places like Des Moines and Burlington. Why? because it burns less gas. If you think just because it’s a “glorified RJ” that it will be stuck puddle jumping sub 500 mile routes, you don’t really understand this plane’s niche in the market.

 

Some of you need to do some research on the A220-300. It’s not a regional jet at all. Can hold up to 160 pax single class.

 

Scope relief can turn anything into an RJ overnight. Let’s hope the North American unions don’t give up scope.

 

Exactly. This airplane provides “optionality.” It’s so versatile it can fly short or longer flights interchangeably - and more profitably than the A319. The A220-300 could easily fly a few short East Coast sectors and then FLL-PDX/SEA/LAX/BUR/SAN with 150-160 pax. This is why David Neeleman (JB founder) just ordered 60 A220-300s for his new Moxy start-up. This type of airplane opens up a lot of profitable route pairings.

 

I probably beat this horse to death before signing but our scope allows this. Capacity Purchase Agreements or Pro-rate agreements are defined as codeshare which is 100% allowed without limit and at any sized aircraft. If Skywest got A220s or A320s or 777s for that matter and spirit wanted to contract out in a CPA to them they could. Our only aircraft size limitations are in the event of a merger and what allow them to keep a separate seniority list.

Codesharing may not be super profitable in a traditional sense but CPAs fall under codeshare in our contract.

Vastly vastly improved scope over the two pages we had before but it has a gapping hole in this respect. But hey they haven’t done it yet so it’s not worth protecting, right?

I like the A220 and I like any new plane that is flown by spirit pilots on the spirit seniority list. Otherwise if it’s painted yellow and it’s not us it’s a piece of garbage and so are the guys up front.

 

I don’t like the A220 but I can sure agree to the last part of that last paragraph...I like any airplane that’s painted yellow. Any A220, A330, B737 or even if we got DC-10’s

 

Delta’s even starting SEA-ATL using the A220:

https://www.routesonline.com/news/38/airlineroute/285624/delta-adds-a220-seattle-atlanta-service-from-june-2020/

Again, a very versatile airplane. You won’t see a similar-sized 717 flying that route.

 

Hub to hub with a 100 seat airplane? I get what you’re saying about flexibility but there’s really not that many “missions” specific to the A220 that Delta has exploited so far. For slot restricted airports it doesn’t make such sense and for a much cheaper price you can get a used 319 to do the same thing. Fancy airplane but I don’t I see the appeal really.

 

319s are going the way of the dodo bird. Like it all you want, it burns way too much gas for what it does.