Meow
.........

 

You’re right, it is an odd question. I don’t pretend to know what is going to, or what should happen. I just find some people’s ideas/speculations interesting, and others entertaining. The reason that I asked is that this is a pivotal moment for the industry. After 9/11 we relaxed scope, the industry ran with it, and we still haven’t recovered. Hopefully this time we have learned a lesson and don’t repeat hard learned lessons. We will be parking some planes, some will come out of storage, others may not. I still wonder about the regional side of the house. Will those tired old 50 seaters find renewed purpose, or will they be parked? If we hold the line on scope, will we look the same coming out of this, or could bringing 100 seat jets to United now make sense? Clueless speculation is what APC is based on, why not enjoy it?

 

Any airplane requiring capex to stay in the fleet will.. leave the fleet.

 

Let me just toss this into the mix...
With the company now offering 50 hour SRL lines, the cost of operating 737s and 319/320s just got cheaper and may be cheaper to operate than RJs. In order to operate those additional flights as mainline, it will now cost the company 73 hrs for pilots to fly it vs 50 hrs for pilots to do nothing. That means the marginal additional mainline pilots cost 31% of what they used to.
You can bet that Scott Kirby is calculating the cost comparison using various formulae.
I wouldn't be surprised to see United shed some RJ contracts soon, whether or not they opt to use mainline aircraft on RJ routes.

 

I hope you’re right. I was talking to my mom today. She said that this is reminding her of the polio scare when she was little. It was a horrible disease and people were afraid, but when the vaccine came out and was proven to work, things got back to normal pretty quick. Hopefully when we come up with a vaccine for this illness things will begin to rebound fairly quickly. The economy has been damaged though and will get worse until that time. It’s kind of like letting a bunch of air out of a ball. It will bounce, but only a fool would expect it to bounce as high as it would have before the air was let out. This isn’t going to be a 3 month pause and then business as usual like myself and others initially thought it would, this has grown into a game changer.

 

You realize that the problem is the other side of the equation, right? Revenue has fallen off the cliff and whatever reduction in manpower costs really don’t matter if revenue drops to near zero. I trust the MEC to understand the landscape and negotiate temporary reductions - if needed. It’s disingenuous to think that this isn’t a fight for the future of the company, and I expect that nobody is gonna like what’s coming. That said, no blank checks.

 

Check out Pandemic on Netflix, episode 1 introduces Distributed Bio which is claiming to be 3-4 weeks away from a treatment using antibodies and not a traditional vaccine.

 

just trying to follow your analysis...I think you meant the marginal additional (sidelined on SRL) pilots cost 50/73hrs = 69% ; ) of what they used to. But the more relevant factor would be the marginal cost of the 50-100 seat lift (at rough avg 34% of the cost in pilot crew pay alone)

XJet 175 FO / UAL 737 FO $/hr
4 yr 46/ 161
3 yr 158 / 44
157 / 42
91 / 40
avg 43 / 137

XJet 175 CA / UAL 737 CA
4 yr 87 / 276
85 / 273
83 / 270
81 / 268
avg 84 / 272

127 / 369
34%

You could pay two RJ crews to fly the same hours and still pay 254/369 =only 69% of the mainline pilot rate for one crew, plus the lower overall operating costs and $/seat-mile efficiency (if you can convince travelers to fly on a full non socially-distanced RJ). I don’t have all those costs or the revenue share for UAL to figure it all out, but likely the only reason they don’t swap RJ for mainline lift right now is to some extent the aircraft range, but mostly the contract and union engagement. But if they do, wouldn’t the RJ profitability at these load factors help the SRL’d mainline guys keep their jobs?

 

You guys do get drug tested at United, right?

 

Which RJs are going into storage?