CLazarus

Haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere on our forums. The linked article didn't really raise an eyebrow until it mentioned the transfer of Mesa CRJ-700s to another operator.

Mesa Air Group Adds New Aircraft, Extends Contract with United Airlines | Mesa Air Group

I'm guessing the 700s will be going to GoJet to become CRJ-550 feedstock. Right now we've announced the conversion of 54 aircraft to 550s by the end of 2020. Are these jets part of the 54 or will they up the total to 74? I don't know. I do know that I've seen an awful lot of reports of maintenance issues and weight restrictions on 550s since they started hitting the line. ****? I hope our crack management team straightens that out pronto, completely unsat. I also hope they quickly run out of potential feedstock, but I count roughly 100-130 more 700s out there that might be obtainable.

CLazarus

As I guessed, now going up to 74 CRJ-550s in the Express fleet:
https://thepointsguy.com/news/united...r-crj550-jets/

Thor

Awesome, Kirby’s RJ lust satisfied without any scope gives. So, where’s our contract?

iahflyr

I like the CRJ-550. I would much rather have seats for our premium customers to buy, rather than force them on a CRJ-200 without any premium seats

Flytolive

Exactly. From a mainline pilot's prospective I hope Kirby gets all the UAX CRJ-550s he can. It is an expensive (CASM), inefficient, weight restricted, uncomfortable, old technology 50 Seater that delivers more 'premium' customers to mainline flights. It's hilarious anyone pretends this breaks the scope choke. If anything it demonstrates its effectiveness.

Meanwhile Delta is laughing their asses off as they are killing it with 223 76 Seaters (UAX 153), 100 mainline A220/3s coming and 91 mainline B717s.

FlyPurdue

Airlines no longer focus on "CASM" internally. The metric(s) used is CESM/RESM. The switch from A --> E is the change from looking at actual seats on the plane to a hypothetical maximum seat configuration, as at the end of the day's if your configuration drives less revenue then it would if it had the maximum seats, thats a bad configuration.

An example would be a 777-300ER, the 77W can hold 546 seats but a common configuration has ~350 seats across J/P/Y. That combination of seats in different cabins drives considerably more revenue than it would with all Y @ 546 seats. Sure, the CASM is considerably higher with ~350 seats, but the CESM is the same. As a result - the RESM is considerably higher in the ~350 seat configuration driving overall better network profitability.

I have no first hand knowledge of UA's CRJ-550, but if I had to guess the forecasted RESM of 50 seats ~ to the RESM of the 70 seat configuration. The CESM (not CASM) is almost certainly lower having one less FA, and less marginal costs associated with less weight and 20 less seats.

Finally, I think this decision has to be looked at holistically as being able to deploy 76/70 seaters elsewhere in the network where those incremental 20/26 economy seats would be more beneficial than on the markets where the -550 is on currently.

I have a class date in a few weeks, and of course I wish that this was all flown by mainline but am hopeful that we'll someday have the chance to fly A220s or 80-seat -175s at mainline.

Flytolive

Interesting, I have never heard of CESM/RESM and neither has Google or airline 10Ks. Do tell where you discovered this mysterious acronym though the premise of maximizing revenue via the seating configuration is obvious and common sensical.

FlyPurdue

First off, I meant no disrespect in my post...I was trying to make it as informative as possible, but I agree it came off rude to you. As far as how I know about these acronyms...I worked for a legacy (not United) in both revenue and fleet strategy for 5 years. All we talked about internally is E-seats. It never makes it into the investor reporting because all Wall Street cares about is actual capacity growth not theoretical, so casm/rasm is what’s reported. It’s extremely easy to work between the 2 metrics so when building executive crib sheets or investor updates, we just use actual seats as the denominator.

CLazarus

GASP! He's management! PANTS 'EM!!!!!

P.S. - I personally like informative posts, learning is neato.

webecheck

And then you left that pencil in the eye existence to fly huh?