UAL pilots. Learn from this, remember scope
 

In a couple years when you negotiate a new contract, remember the pending reductions in force of today and don’t give up scope when Kirby demands it tomorrow. Hold ALPA accountable.

God speed.

Yep
The flying you give away to rj’s todsy,you may wish you had it in house tmrw.

I wish we had it in house yesterday.

Good luck to us all indeed, but I don’t think this dip will change our collective resolve on scope, if anything just the opposite as we fight to keep more flying on the mainline. There was a question on the ops conference call today asking if grant money would flow through to UAX carriers and UAL may be planning expend some UA grant money on UAX to keep the network in tact.

If there are mainline furloughs, there are some restrictions on the number of seats (76 to 70) and you’ve gotta know that will be bring more attention to scope, not less.

You probably heard this, but 50 seat RJs are NOT expected to part of the recovery scenario. Barring a full and fast economic bounce, the 50 seat jets are gone. That’s paraphrased from Kirby.

so as someone at XJT, I should start looking for a new job huh...

You won't be flying a 50 seat for United anymore. He just said it today.

What's the plan to maintain service into all the podunk towns?

well, we’re in the process of giving all of “our”
175s to skywest so that leaves us with an all 145 fleet. So safe to say XJT won’t be around much longer...

Yep. Sounds like game over. Thanks for playing.

welp, time to crack open that bottle

Greyhound.

Turboprops baby!

I would like to read more into this... Do you have a link?

Scott Kirby said it today at United’s town hall

ahh. Interesting. Thanks.

Same as those who used to have scheduled flights due to the essential service routes, they drive 2 hours to a bigger city.

I'm not sure I believe everything he says. The questions were clearly prescreened 'softballs . Nobody asked about 50 seat jets, so his comment was unsolicited. You should ask yourself why he decided to throw that into the mix...

I honestly can’t think of a reason why he would?

ill be honest with you, I personally think the CRJ2 and 145 are old pieces of crap but I also want to have a job in a few months.

Did he say anything further about how he sees the UAX product? They’re still maxed out on scope for express 70/76 seaters.

Scope relief

Bingo +10000

I'm not sure what's going on obviously, but he definitely threw that out for a reason.

He's always touted the RJ feed as critical to feeding our hubs and vital to our growth strategy. Hell, we were ADDING 50 seaters to the fleet! That he seemed certain they would be gone seems to contradict his optimism that we will emerge stronger and able to capitalize on growth/expansion opportunities. Maybe they were cooking a plan to phase them out over time and restructure our scope and fleets, and this accelerated the timeline? Maybe they decided to but E195E2s and bring everything to mainline? I have no clue, but we should be watching carefully! We need to watch our backs nytime they say things that make us say "yay!".

Good luck!

Maybe he sees an order for small narrow bodies, and demand falling for years, AA will be wishing they held onto their 190's, everything will be upguaged while demand shrinks.

319 on 321 route and SNB on 319 route, unlocked RJs are a kicker. Frequency reductions will help negate service needs for 50 seaters.

so if 50 seat jets are allegedly going away, where does that leave gojets with the 550? TSH with the turkey in the 10th frame? I don't buy it as anything more than a kneejerk reaction. We can't completely eliminate every market that only 50 seaters make sense in...

I didn’t hear the call but wanted to add that if they furlough deeper than a pilot with a hire date prior to Jan 23 2016, all 76 seaters are to be converted to 70 seaters.

The consensus is American domestic will return much faster than high density long haul. I hoping Christmas/Thanksgiving travel will spark it.

United will have to get with the times and rely less on their PamAm routes. If they bring on a SNB the 550 can become a 700 again. They may realize they're over exposed in one segment of demand.

After this mess H1N1, or SARS or any other further Chinese sanitary virus pops off they're gonna be quick to shut it down. There Asian reliance will forever have to proceed with caution for steady revenue.

His comment today regarding parking 50 seaters was in response to a question if UA has any plans to park any fleets in the near future. His response was he’s hoping for a quick recovery and not having to park any airplanes at all. He said if the recovery is too slow, he’d be looking at parking the 75, 76 and airbus fleet. He then made the comment about parking 50 seaters if the recovery was too slow.

Oscar and Scott both said UA would be taking the grant money, and anticipates UAs share being around 5 billion. Scott said they were considering the loans but hadn’t seen the terms yet. He also said current 4th quarter forecasts are a 30% decrease in revenue.

He said the 50 seaters would be gone in nearly every scenario.

Wow, that's a radical change, WN style with some widebodies.

Why the 50 seats though? I get they're not that great but they make a lot of money for the company by going into tiny markets. Short term I guess I understand but long term...are you telling me that 737s will be going into Hays, KS? Or that they're just going to give up towns like that? I don't buy it...

It will be the new DEN-ORD direct service on a Max 8 with stops in HYS-SLN-LNK and DSM.

I know it has been done in the past, but I don't see us rapidly parking an entire fleet type. We have quite a few 756s, 320s, and even 777s that are 25ish years old. I count 21 757s, 21 767s, 30 320s, and 5 777s that are hitting 25 years old or more as of right now. We could retire/part out older jets piecemeal as they approach heavy checks and such, including some problem children younger than 25 (any jet I've landed has probably never flown the same since).

It seems to me the benefit of slicing down fleets like this is that it reduces the number of potential displacements. That is, if we retired a dozen 756s tomorrow the number of CAs affected would be muted by retirements, and the junior FOs being displaced would only be able to bid to 320/737.

Having never witnessed this process first hand or being privy to fleet decision making considerations, this is just idle speculation on my part. I'd be very interested to learn more from folks with better insight or hard earned experience.

People in Hays can drive 2.5 hours to ICT. People in CLL drive to IAH........ Hays is so small that it could potentially be dropped. My relatives live in a small town about twice the size of Hays and they drive 2 hours to a bigger city if they need to fly.

Not a deal breaker for the one trip a year crowd but no business person (high yield) is doing that.

I agree. If $140/barrel didn’t kill the 50-seat market, they sure are viable in a $30/barrel world.

I wonder how much high yield traffic is in Hays. I’ve been through there numerous times and there isn’t that much there outside of a sale barn, other farm and ranch related businesses, and some restaurants. My town is twice the size of Hays and I drive 1.5 hrs to the closest airport.

Smiles around virtual land
 

Okay Oscar, I’m sure the Hundreds of pilots who just lost their jobs and the thousands more in jeopardy are smiling with you....

Call me cynical, but Kirby will use this crisis to his advantage. Don’t trust him!

I can see a scenario where a lot of 50 seaters are parked as he stated. Kirby then pleads to our MC, to give the company an equivalent number of 70/76 seaters to replace the lost feed, “otherwise we’ll have to furlough UAL pilots”.

It will be sold as a win-win (no furloughs) and the company gets their scope relief without spending a thin dime. Well, maybe they’ll throw a few bones in with it, but the damage will be done.

Hopefully it’s just my imagination, but after over two decades here, why would they let this crisis go to waste?

Right but if we can make money off of them, then we should. We've been doing that for years. Otherwise why would we fly to places like COS when they could just drive? To extort the market thats why