I personally do not see them dragging it out. UA pilots on a day to day basis are pretty motivated. If RJ Kirby upsets the apple cart things will not go well. Oscar does not want this.

Record earnings in every sector across the USA. A massive tax cut that UA now has billions to play with. RJ Kirby can want all he wants, just like he wanted at AA. Put UA pilots in 76 seat jets. Grow the airline. Fix a bunch of other things and everyone is happy.

UA has gotten no benefit from the tax cut. They’re still taking carry forward tax losses from the lost decade. When those run out UA will actually have to pay taxes.

Yup. And now the carry forwards will last even longer.

Taxes: On December 22, 2017, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was signed into federal law, which, among other changes, reduces the federal corporate tax rate to 21%. The tax rate change will reduce the Company’s federal income tax liability in future years beginning with 2018. The Company expects a tax rate of approximately 22% to 24% for the full year of 2018. The Company’s net operating loss carryforwards are expected to offset taxable income and no material cash taxes are expected to be paid in 2018.

I don't know if that will ever happen but, if it did, they wouldn't be 76 seaters anymore.

The only reason the E-175 has 76 seats is that it is SCOPE-limited to 76 seats. They put 12 first class seats in it because of the extra room. If configured for mainline, there would be no limit so they'd likely trade six FC seats for as many as 12 E+/E seats. That would put it up to about 82 seats. That would help a little bit with the economics.

You are most most likely correct and with the fuel efficiency of those 175-E2's it could be a CASM machine.

I'm not convinced that they'd operate the 175-sized airplane at mainline. It wouldn't cost that much more to do the 195/CS100-sized airplane and that would have lower CASM.

The problem is our management is looking to solve a "today" problem, but we are going to have these jets for 30 years possibly. There is no reason not to just buy a 100 seat jet, and fly it to markets where they might only fill 76 seats now, but they will grow into 100 seat markets in the future, or shift to markets where it makes sense.

The smallest plane we fly right now is the 737-700 which has between 118-126 seats depending on configuration. We have a big hole in our plane capacity from 76-118, which is a lot of small and medium cities. A 90-100 seat jet would go a long way to filling that hole. Its a strategy thats working for Delta right now.

Our management is SO short-sighted it is amazing.

Dear United-Continental Pilots,

Please don't give up the SCOPE! The future of pilot careers in the industry depends on you guys holding the line.

You already have my gratitude for keeping the scope limited better than your peers at AAL and DAL.

Signed,
An FO who flies 76-seat RJs for an "airline" owned by an airline

If that isn’t a rallying-cry, charter, and creed, I don’t know what is.

Ex ore infantium.

Amen we will hold the line. Attachment 3566

Hold the line. If Uncle Leo can, we can.

Haha! Awesome. Unfortunately a lot of kids don’t know who Uncle Leo is. I guess we are getting to that age.

What’s with the 19 DEN Guppy FO awards?? 19??

Making room for all those who might get hired at the FTC.

I dont think thats how it works.

Dunno... funny how it coincides with a large increase in PI hiring...

The term "Paper Bid" comes to mind.

I'm probably much older than you, and I have no clue who Uncle Leo is.

You guys didn’t watch enough Seinfeld.

Check out the Crew Resource Update dated 1/26/18, paragraph 1, bullet point 2.

PC states that’s specifically what it’s for.

Eh, what do I know...

Oh! Sorry! I guess I was to busy perusing my dreams... becoming an architect.

Well played.

And you thought you could be an architect.

Why stop there? Why not a city planner?

“Sets room aside for the hiring of PIs”. I guess I don’t understand why there is a need for that. The PIs are listed as SUP and they don’t take a spot on the domicile roster (count toward the min/max)..they are just extras.

I’m sure they know what they are doing. 🙈🙉🙊🤡🤡🤡

Yeah, but they aren't hired yet. You take 10, 20 or even 30 guys out, and it really leaves a hole for the summer flying.

Or maybe an engineer.

It’s based on an assumption that most of the Pilots that will be selected as PIs are already based in DEN. They will need to be replaced.

How many times has man power screwed the pooch with assuming what pilots are going to do? Especially with the previous widebody displacements.

I didn't say they were right! Just noted which assumption it was based upon. If applications have started coming in, they may have a gotten a hint about where these pilots are coming from. Or, it could be a straight up guess.

"You knew that I always wanted to pretend to be an architect!"

Sorry, wasn’t challenging you, more making an observation about their history of failure when assuming what pilots will do when it comes to bids and bumps.

True but in this case they had all the applications in hand and they know how many pilots are coming out of DEN and into TK.

Fair enough! That might be the most organized I’ve seen them in the past 3 years if that’s the case.

I completely agree with you SUX4U! They COULD have had all that info, and SHOULD have but, you know...
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... apply for a job in planning.
In all seriousness, the recent shuffles especially the 787 IAH thing instills ZERO confidence that this is actually well thought out and planned.

Can you show the math on any of that other than Delta hiring more than united which is true for pretty much the entire last decade.

Yup and I’m mostly a pessimist when it comes to United and they rarely miss the mark. I tried to be an optimist this week. I was looking forward to flying MUC again in March as previously advertised, but the company did not disappoint my normal self and pushed it back to April. I only moved back 1% in base on this latest bid so I got that going for me.

Please tell me what Tony Robbins books you are reading because I could really use some help seeing the awesomeness at United.

You commute to work don’t you?

Nope live 25 minutes from the airport in a hot humid stagnant base where for some reason all the senior people are moving to.

Sure

Delta, according to air fleets.net, has 860 jets. They are parking all of their MD-80/90 fleet by 2020 which is 166 aircraft plus an unknown amount of old 757s and A320s. They have 200 or so aircraft on order so their fleet will remain mostly flat.

United by comparison has 100 or so jets due by the end of 2020 and we are not retiring anything. after 2020 we have 100 more 737 due.

So by 2020 if we from by 6-8% every year and don't park any jets we will be roughly the same size as DL. Which means our upgrade should be pretty close to inline with theirs.

The most Junior DL CA today is on the MD-80 so unless that pilot gets someone junior to them on a bid before they start displacing off the MD-80 they will have to displace into an FO seat.

The next junior CA aircraft is the 717, a 100 seater, I do believe that UA will have a 100 seat aircraft order on the books by early next year or sooner. If that happens UAs upgrade will drop to a year just due to the pay rates.

DL has 2014 hires as CAs on the airbus and 737 as I said above we are only 1000 numbers away from this here at United. My guess is by spring of next year there will be a 2013-2014 CA on the 737/320 at United.

DL has hired over 1000 a year for the last 4 years while United has hired 600 on average. That means that there are 400 more pilots to get through every year at DL to make CA. So by 2020 I think United will have more junior CAs than DL.

I know there are a ton of assumptions in there but going off of todays info and a successful growth plan United will be on the same playing field as DL by 2020. Thats my math.

I like where you are going with this.....my concern/question is “How much of the 6-8% growth assumption is based on increased utilization rates of existing personnel and equipment, rather than growth thru additional personnel and equipment”? Been watching a disturbing pattern of deferring delivery’s for awhile now.