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https://www.flightglobal.com/strategy/united-begins-removing-seats-from-regional-aircraft/

This is the first I've seen saying it’s happening. Fake news or did they actually start?

tallpilot

It is exactly as the article says; the seat maps in the computer have indeed been changed.

TFAYD

I doubt they change the computer maps just for kicks and giggles. I also don’t think that this is Special Ks idea of signaling.

i expect this to be the precursor for the inevitable.

UAL97

There are already a bunch of 175's flying around with 70 seats due to scope restrictions. This is just poor reporting again, most likely.

Hedley

I don’t think that any of this is just a show to get more relief from the government. I don’t deny that they’re really talking a good game about how serious this is, hoping for an extension, but there is an uncomfortable amount of truth in what they are saying. The bailout ends in a couple of months and the demand for our product is in the toilet. What limited demand we have had up until this point has mostly been leisure travel. That typically drops off dramatically in the fall, and our core business customers are not buying tickets. There is no way that the company is going to be able to only furlough 17% of us when revenue is as low as it is. When the company came out with their 30% number, I thought that they were way off and people would be back in much larger numbers by now, but they’re not. I know that they want to be able to spool up quickly when the time comes, but staffing pilots at 70% when demand is less than 50% is carrying a bunch of cushion. My guess is that they are converting the 76 seaters to 70 seats because they are going to furlough 30% of us as fast as TK can train the survivors. I Agree that there won’t be a significant recovery until there is a proven and widely distributed vaccine and or treatment. I hope all of their worst case predictions don’t happen, but so far they haven’t seemed to predict how bad it already is.

Deathray

so you’re saying there’s a chance!

brockenspectre

These new batch of seat removals will have a different configuration than the aircraft that were delivered with 70. So until everything is completed, there will be 3 separate seating configs for the E 175.

tallpilot

That will keep the gate agents busy after a last minute tail swap.

brockenspectre

Hit the nail on the head right there....going to cause some heartburn for sure!

Hedley

https://www.businessinsider.com/unit...fs-near-2020-8

Looks like they’re currently reconfiguring the 76 seaters. It’s going to be interesting to see how the United/UAX mix turns out on the back side of this. I can’t imagine us allowing the regionals to have any more 70/76 seat jets. Depending on how serious Scott Kirby was about phasing out the 50 seaters, that could help us bring flying back to United. My guess is that we hold the line on scope and Kirby keeps wanting more rj’s as the 50 seat fleet slowly ages out and goes away. Either way, the regional fleet shrinks.