AAL moves to shrink Envoy nearly by half

[WorldTraveler]

http://blogs.star-telegram.com/sky_talk/2014/05/with-american-parking-regional-aircraft-envoy-will-need-47-percent-fewer-pilots.html

Looks like 59 of the E140s which made no economic sense anyway will be parked while 47 CR7s will be transferred to other regional carriers.

sorry for the Envoy pilots to see this becoming reality.

On a unit per unit basis, even the new E175s that AAL will acquire will have to be used to offset E140 flying.

 

[eolesen]

Don't assume that all the E140 flying is going be backfilled.

We already had this discussion: many of the third and fourth tier cities have service to two or more hubs. The overlapping service is going to get trimmed back.

It's also likely that some fourth tier cities will be closed down entirely.

It's unfortunate, but really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Perhaps ALPA @ MQ didn't think management was actually being up-front about the outcome of the vote, or that they would be this decisive this quickly.

 

[WorldTraveler]

that is exactly what I mean. AAL's capacity will shrink or resources will be diverted to try to maintain this service.

Closing hubs is exactly what was expected to occur with consolidation. Whether it takes the form of complete hub closures for AA, the decision to write off 60 of the Embraers isn't just about the pilots; it is about AA doing what it has to do to rationalize its network, including parking money losing small RJs. The pilot shortage at regional airlines only compounds the problem and Envoy certainly suffered from it.

Large RJs still require two pilots just like an E140 and a 737-800 for that matter. When resources are scarce, they are reallocated to the best uses.

You can't expect to pull spokes off of hubs and have the rest of the hub continue to function. That has been tried multiple times with the same results; once you start pulling spokes off of a hub, the ability to backfill that traffic on multiple other legs is very hard to do, esp. since all of AA's hubs except for CLT are highly competitive or will be by the time the hub restructuring is done.

As for MQ, I think they were well aware of the consequences but there is a point when any worker has to decide whether it is worth continuing at their present job, potentially at lower and lower wages, or cut and run and restart either at another airline or in an entirely new industry in the case of MQ pilots.

I wish them the very best in however and wherever they land.

 

[AirLUVer]

How is this any different than what your ALMIGHTY Delta is doing?  Reducing smaller RJ fleets and filling them in with larger regional jets and small mainline narrowbodies, although in AA's case they are getting A319's instead of 717's.
 
You make this sound like it is another downfall of the merger.

 

[eolesen]

It's not a result of the merger, but the merger certainly does afford AAL the flexibility (and the political cover?) to be able to consider and execute this as a strategic option.

 

[TWU informer]

Given the shortage of Pilots in the industry, those ENVOY Pilots will be better off than cowering to management's tools of fear. I better everyone of them are working again as soon as they want to be, and for better pay and benefits. They will just take the severance, and then go to work elsewhere.

 

[WorldTraveler]

How is this any different than what your ALMIGHTY Delta is doing?  Reducing smaller RJ fleets and filling them in with larger regional jets and small mainline narrowbodies, although in AA's case they are getting A319's instead of 717's.
 
You make this sound like it is another downfall of the merger.

it's not any different at all other than that the 717s are smaller and cost far less to operate, esp. on relatively short flights similar to what RJs, even CR7s, operate.

it's not a downfall of the merger at all. It is an expected outcome which a lot of people denied would come which means that the new AA will be smaller than what it is now; and given that it is still significantly larger than DL or UA in the domestic marketplace, they have more than enough space to reduce some domestic capacity.

but if you want to see it as similar, which I believe it is, they you have to accept that there will be hub closures/reductions in AA's future no different from what DL did at CVG and MEM.

it is precisely the change in the business environment that makes Parker's promises of not cutting certain hubs meaningless. The economics of the industry have changed dramatically even in the past few months and no company would have agreed to or can be expected to maintain small RJ capacity that has been an essential part of many airline hubs.

 

[swamt]

Sorry to hear all the negative news.  Will the F/A's and mechanics be affected?  With 47% of fleet gone I would think so.  I also agree with informer above.  With the vote outcome they will be better in the long run, there will be some hurdles getting there, but it won't take the four years the company wanted to freeze for.  Good luck to all.  I think I remember SWA saying something about hiring pilots and F/A's for new rules and all the added flights coming over the next several years, If I find out more info I will pass it along...

 

[Dont call me Shirley]

Comair Parx Deux...
 
I think this has less to do with hub reduction than with playing the regionals against each other.

 

[WorldTraveler]

except there is nothing to play one side against the other.

The regional industry in its entirety will be a whole lot smaller by the end of the year. Every regional carrier is having trouble staffing the flights they have committed to.

The mainline carriers will have to step in and pick up slack or watch their networks shrink.

And since you can't just pull 2 or 3 regional jet flights out and replace them with one mainline flight without some major restructuring of the overall network, there will be significant impact to the network carriers.

 

[N288AA]

http://blogs.star-telegram.com/sky_talk/2014/05/with-american-parking-regional-aircraft-envoy-will-need-47-percent-fewer-pilots.html

Looks like 59 of the E140s which made no economic sense anyway will be parked while 47 CR7s will be transferred to other regional carriers.

sorry for the Envoy pilots to see this becoming reality.

On a unit per unit basis, even the new E175s that AAL will acquire will have to be used to offset E140 flying.

Envoy has a pilot staffing issue. This is a direct quote from management on the first quarter pilot hiring and looses. Fabregas: Right now for example in January, we had a class of 15 to 20 pilots. I would say we hired around 15 pilots, first quarter we hired 52 pilots but we are moving to American, and flow through to American about 20 per month, 20 per month goes to American, but it’s around 22 per month that are leaving or retiring so when you say 20 going to American, 20-24 to retire, you’re losing about 44 per month. So it’s very complicated the hiring process but what we have now are contracts with ten universities and around 6 flying schools what we call the pilot pipeline program which we are hiring pilots from those schools. They get a bonus when they come and work for us, so we’re working on the process of getting these pilots also from these schools. We are losing around 20 to 22 per month going to other airlines or retiring form the company…I would say it’s around 44 per month, we are hiring around 15 so you’ll see the deficit there.

Read more here: http://blogs.star-telegram.com/sky_talk/2014/04/american-eagle-president-no-plans-for-furloughs-or-to-seek-flying-contracts-from-other-airlines.html#storylink=cpy

 

[mwa]

nothing new here. said this all along - now the spin is punitive. nothing that was not in the works all along

 

[jimntx]

Read more here:
http://blogs.star-te...l#storylink=cpy

 
Does Mr. Fabregas not know the difference between an airplane and an airline? Twice in the above article he used the word, airline, when he should have said airplane.

Another quote from the article:
"Fabregas: My opinion is you’ll see very soon probably 6 10 months there will be a turnaround in the regional industry. Let me explain why, there is a lot of big RJs, large RJs, coming in. For example if you have a route today being operated by a 50-seater and you have three flights from point A to point B, you’ll be operating that route in the future with one E-175 or one CRJ-900. The airlines are evaluating their 50seaters, they are not economically the best airline to operate today, so you’ll see a lot of large RJs like E-175 or CRj-900 coming in replacing those airlines, and these are not one for one so by default the offset will be different on the hiring process, so you’ll have airplanes coming in but you aren’t going to require the same amount of pilots to operate those routes so you will see a change in the industry over the next 8, 10, 12 months…"

What?

 

[eolesen]

Does Mr. Fabregas not know the difference between an airplane and an airline? Twice in the above article he used the word, airline, when he should have said airplane.

There are two possibilities here...

Spanish is his native language, and using airliner interchangeably with airplane & aircraft is not at all unusual in other languages.

I've never heard him speak, so I don't know how much of an accent he has. Since the average reporter doesn't know enough to thing 5 degrees left or right of what they think is being said, it wouldn't surprise me in the least bit if they aren't picking up on the "r" in airliner.

Read it this way:

"Fabregas: My opinion is you’ll see very soon probably 6 10 months there will be a turnaround in the regional industry. Let me explain why, there is a lot of big RJs, large RJs, coming in. For example if you have a route today being operated by a 50-seater and you have three flights from point A to point B, you’ll be operating that route in the future with one E-175 or one CRJ-900. The airlines are evaluating their 50seaters, they are not economically the best [airliner] to operate today, so you’ll see a lot of large RJs like E-175 or CRj-900 coming in replacing those [airliners], and these are not one for one so by default the offset will be different on the hiring process, so you’ll have airplanes coming in but you aren’t going to require the same amount of pilots to operate those routes so you will see a change in the industry over the next 8, 10, 12 months…"

But, perhaps he really did mean airlines, as in the contract carriers in question.

Paraphrased... not all contract carriers are economically the best carrier to contract with today, and you'll see a lot of large RJ's coming in to replace those carriers...

 

[WorldTraveler]

it still doesn't change that you can replace 3 50 seaters with 2 large RJs. The seats may be about the same but the configuration of the hub changes a whole lot when you start reducing the number of flights in hub complexes which is exactly what happens when a flight or two is removed from every market.


There are very few markets where a carrier can reduce frequencies in a market by 1/3 or more and there not be an impact on the network. Further, increasing capacity by 50% per flight does not necessarily mean that you will profitability fill that new capacity.