Spoiler

Parking 145's not that many 140's. planned to go to 55@140's and 70@145's after the last 135 this year

odog1121

55+70+47, so 172 fleet size vs 250+ now?

emb145

Actually this is incorrect. I talked to the VP Flt Ops last Friday. As of that day the plan is to fly all 59 140's and all 118 145's through the end of 2014. The last 2 135's will be parked by the end of the year. Apparently that's as far as their planning goes for now. And it's all contingent on IF they can get enough pilots as the numbered guys are finishing up and the 824's are about to start. In October alone, 48 Captain's are flowing. 25 numbered guys are already in the first November class and 31 numbered guys remain for potentially the last November class. So right at 100 Captain's gone in 2 months time and this is before the 824's begin.

Also, their renegotiated leases on all 145's and 140's go through 2017 at those lower rates. They may elect to park a select number of 140's before then and replace them with larger aircraft, either with Eagle or another regional. If the merger doesn't go through, I would expect the 140's to fly longer. If it does go through, then they may park sooner. The problem is the amount of block hours Eagle flies. There isn't much out there that can replace ALL of it right now.

I personally don't think it's ALL doom and gloom at Eagle. The pilot group has been through a lot of negativity since the bankruptcy and there isn't much light at the end of the tunnel. I think that the management IS purposely making it bad here to force the lifers over to AA in order to achieve lower labor costs. Every single flow through so far has been on Step 18 pay and most of the top half of 824's are Step 18 as well.

Sure, the management blows here just like they do at ALL airlines now. You used to at least have Herb at Southwest and Gordon Bethune at Continental who were true innovators that understood the power of empowering and taking care of their employees.

My humble opinion is that Eagle will continue to fly and shrink down to around a total of a little over 200 airframes in the end with perhaps a combination of CRJ700's and CRJ900's replacing the 140's that park. I think that just about all of the 145's will fly through 2017 as a plan develops for replacing them with larger RJ's that will likely be split between Eagle and others. Eagle may very well end up being a CRJ only operator after 2017 and beyond.

What

We currently have 225ish airframes on property and will be a 220 airframe airline by Jan 1 2014. The PBS LOA sucks, management can make our life hell and we have no duty or trip rigs. With that said, management currently flies CA on RSV close to their monthly max, having PBS will save them money as people won't be getting paid for flights they don't do but it won't do wonders for staffing. Currently someone who has vacation and or training gets their trips dropped into OT and the reserve flies it, under PBS you won't get the trip but someone now will get lines built with those dropped trips. If one looks at the way the schedules are built for November it's no different to what they can do with PBS, there is no purity to lines in Nov.

Management will save some money from PBS at the expense of pilots maximizing conflicts and other things but it will not be the fix to staffing.

We have 2800 pilots and 225 airplanes, out of those 2800 probably around 100 are inactive and 200 (being conservative) or so are out between union and company assignment to include instructors So that leaves us with 2500 pilots flying the line. That is around 5.5 crews per airplane or 6 captains. That means that as 20 Captains leave for AA they would have to park 4 airplanes or so, then say another 10-15 elsewhere and AA is looking at having to park another 3 airplanes. So they are looking at parking 7 airplanes a month or 85 airplanes a year if they choose not to upgrade. Can AA withstand this amount of airplanes being parked while RAH struggles to staff 2 airplanes a month.

Currently RAH is staffing the AA flying with crews mainly who used to fly the E190s that were returned, at some point this will catch up to them as well as the Q400 operation.

It will be interesting to see what they choose to do. But this is why we are hiring, because even if they park 2-3 airplanes a month they will have to upgrade 25 guys a month just to keep up with attrition.

As things stand today AMR is not hurting for FO, they would like to attract as many as possible but we are overstaffed on many positions on the Fo side. They are waiting as long as possible before upgrading. When they time comes they will make the move to attract new hires but expect raising pay to be the last move. They know the power of shinny airplanes specially if they have engines under the wing and look like a 737.

Bzzt

600+ sure was wrong

What

RAH wants 600, Eagle wants 600, MESA wants 300, TSA wants 100, Compass wants 150 and others... There isn't that many pilots out there looking for regional work. As SKW continues hiring and everyone starts hiring you will see the classes at RAH start to shrink, for the better part of this year they were offering the most movement and promising future but the field will start balancing out.

emb145

I count 129 hired YTD.

sf340b

Eagle will look over 20 apps to interview 10, hire 6, 4 make it through training, and 2 will actually make it past their proby ride.

The other 28 that Eagle did not want will work for PSA, RAH, SKW, TSA, and fly bigger aircraft, in Eagle colors, and on Eagle routes. As they will upgrade quicker they will do this Eagle flying at a higher rate.

Just saying'.

Slats

hey now.... SKW is just as picky as Eagle is when it comes to hiring.

FutureFO

Can't be that picky since they hired you!