Dl's China Loss Points Out Network Deficiencies

[Kev3188]

Hasn't Northwest added some service from PDX, DL's former gateway?

[post="250689"][/post]​

Yes, NW is running PDX-NRT. The flight is doing pretty good. As an aside, when adding this flight, NW moved over to the D concourse. The new operations area is where the DL FA/Pilot base used to be.

 

[NewHampshire Black Bears]

Excellent post "WT', excellent post !!!!!!!!!!!

You've just convinced me EVEN MORE, that if the Industry landed on even "harder times", that the last 3 carriers "out of the pool" would be AA, WN, and (BIG RED)-NW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good point also(by ?) about AS. EVERYBODY "HAS been going to" acquire AS, but no one REALLY wants to, that is UNLESS someone seriously sets the "buy out" wheels in motion. (Thats when AA shows up at AS's door with oodle's of money)
DON'T ANYONE ASK ME WHERE AA WOULD GET THE MONEY,just know that they WOULD !!!!! (HEY, MABEY that's when "uncle BOBBY re-appears on the scene, to "direct" the transition of AS into AA) (How much $$$$ "moola" is AA sitting on these days) ???

Bottom line ???

US receiving "last rights"
UA told to "Get your (final) house in order"
DL Inflicted with an incurable(airline) disease
+
CO gets their tails painted "RED"


WN, doing what they do best--EVERYTHING
NW, getting "fatter, happier, and Quirkier"
+
AA, programing their simulators for landings in Shanghai, (and mayby) BARROW(AS) and Sydney(thanx UA)

NH/BB's

 

[magsau]

NH/BB,

You think that UA would sell the pacific to AA? How many years have you wanted those routes????? Fuggggetttabbbouuuuuttttiiiiiittt. I would rather UA sell the routes to Aeroflot and than to let one stinkin AA airplane take those flights. By the way the 777 does not work well in the south pacific, (see UA lax-akl). You need a real airplane to get down under and AA has none.

How about programming your sims. with a requirement to be aware of your position on the ground and to have some sort of ability to fly and listen to ATC instructions at the same time? Traveling to ORD with AA on the radio is painful with all of the missed calls by the AA pilots and the wrong turns on the taxiway and various other AA snafu's that make them the bane of the ORD ATC.

As the controller on ground said last week, "come on American, you really need to pay attention, you are making my life miserable!"

 

[magsau]

This is created just for WorldTraveler, Yeehah!,


Top reasons DL did not get China flights.

1. No pork BBQ or grits for the crews laying over in China.

2. If you yell "Earnhardt" in China they arrest you.

3. DL working on drilling tunnel from T-Gates directly through center of earth to Peking.

4. Most DL pax. think dining at P.F. Changs is a cultural experience.

5. On questionaire, DL exec. asked if the ground in China really is red.

Thanks for coming, please tip your waitress.

 

[aislehopper]

3. DL working on drilling tunnel from T-Gates directly through center of earth to Peking.

[post="250755"][/post]​

This is an unlawful disclosure of confidential information.

Expect a call from corporate security. 😛h34r:

 

[WorldTraveler]

Too funny, Mags. I can laugh with you on that.

NH/BB,
I think you are mostly right; UA will not sell any part of the Pacific to anyone as long as it intends to stay alive which means AA is out of the running unless UAL is liquidated. I do think AA will likely buy AS in order to get a strong transpac hub (SEA is within the range of just about the entire Pacific rim w/ a 777); NW will be torn between having to go after CO or letting AS go – it’s doubtful they could do both.

I simply remind you that DL has a long history of not being taken seriously as a viable competitor and yet has managed to not only survive but also thrive in the real and tumble world of international aviation. I might also encourage you to carefully evaluate DL’s intention of getting its costs down to within SINGLE DIGITS of its LCC competitors. AA is the only legacy airline to knowledge that has stated that a single digit RASM advantage is probably about all that can be sustained but has yet to deliver a turnaround plan to make that cost plan happen. And, as has been mentioned before, DL has more untapped balance sheet strength in its ownership of the Delta Connection carriers than does any other airline through any other asset.

Another word about fleet: consolidations will be less concerned with fleet (NW can make a CO acquisition work) because there could be so many fleet-incompatible acquisitions that otherwise don’t make sense that the survivors will be forced to swap fleets in order to make the deals work. Ie NW could swap the 737NGs and 767s acquired from CO with either AA or DL in return for the US or UA’s Airbus aircraft. (hypothetical combinations) Although no legacy airline has identical aircraft to another legacy’s, UA and NW 320s are more compatible than are 320s and 737NGs.

Finally, Fly. I sympathize with the grief you must feel watching UA slowly die but UA’s recently announced operating loss further indicates the patient just isn’t getting better. That loss cannot be fixed unless you and your coworkers are willing to cut off and give to your bosses many, many more body parts than you have given so far.

 

[NewHampshire Black Bears]

NH/BB,

You think that UA would sell the pacific to AA? How many years have you wanted those routes????? Fuggggetttabbbouuuuuttttiiiiiittt. I would rather UA sell the routes to Aeroflot and than to let one stinkin AA airplane take those flights. By the way the 777 does not work well in the south pacific, (see UA lax-akl). You need a real airplane to get down under and AA has none.

How about programming your sims. with a requirement to be aware of your position on the ground and to have some sort of ability to fly and listen to ATC instructions at the same time? Traveling to ORD with AA on the radio is painful with all of the missed calls by the AA pilots and the wrong turns on the taxiway and various other AA snafu's that make them the bane of the ORD ATC.

As the controller on ground said last week, "come on American, you really need to pay attention, you are making my life miserable!"

[post="250752"][/post]​

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

magsau,
DON'T ever worry about AA "pulling a rabbit out of the hat" with regard to "not having the right A/C", at "this" particuliar time.
When they got NRT, "presto chango", uncle Bobby came up with a pair of 747sp's overnight. Yes your also right, that as a "boeing" carrier, AA would need "the Queen of the sky", for SYD. (until the 787 was ready)

NH/BB's

 

[aislehopper]

Does anyone know if the 777LR has the range to serve SYD from the US?

 

[TheDog2004]

The problem Delta has is the hyper-Atlanta centralization of the new route structure. The analysts at Delta believe they can funnel ANYONE through Atlanta and they will prefer it over flying direct. There is still a lot of resistance to the concept of point-to-point in that company. That's why you see insane routings like LAS-ATL-PEK being proposed. I'll bet Yohe pulls his hair out when he sees that crap.

 

[jimntx]

On owning the regional feed, I think the jury is still out on the outsourced FPD arrangements. In profitable times, outsourcing the feed and keeping all the upside is very attractive. But in losing times, when cash generation (and cash conservation) is of paramount importance, owning the feed looks like the better choice to me.
[edited for length]
Mesa and Republic keep reporting profits while many of their mainline partners are suffering.

As you pointed out, the "losing times" advantage of direct ownership is that you pay for the feed at cost, rather than cost plus. Are Mesa and Republic reporting profits as profitably-run companies, or are the profits the result of fee-for-departure arrangements that guarantee a profit regardless of the number of passengers delivered to the network?

This same question can be modified to the value of the W/Os in a potential sale. Yes, investors see the regionals making money. I don't think they are so dumb that they don't realize that the money is coming from FFD contract arrangements. In buying a Comair or ASA or AE, don't you think that the investor would want some similar arrangement? The much-touted higher CASM of the RJs makes them less attractive if you can only be paid for fannies in the seats--see also, almost anyone's results for January this year.

In the early 90's, Texaco jumped on the "let's make every department a profit center--including obvious service departments like IT (where I worked) or Accounting (which I supported)" bandwagon. It is a ridiculous concept. We all started talking in terms of "green dollars" vs "Texaco dollars." Green dollars came from the outside--Producing, refining, and marketing transactions that resulted in actual countable revenue in the bank. Texaco dollars were accounting sleights-of-hand that said that Accounting (which generated no revenue for the company) paid IT x dollars for IT services. They were able to "pay" this bill from IT because they charged Producing for the bookkeeping services provided. Of course, not one actual piece of U.S. currency ever passed between Producing and Accounting, but Accounting and IT could, by god, show a "profit", or at least, "break even", at the end of the year. (Oh, and did mention that IT paid Accounting to keep track of all this "revenue" that IT was generating?) All it did was swell the staffing of the Accounting department trying to keep all this straight.

The same Accounting "advantages" actually make some financial sense with W/O's. The fact that AA and AE are both wholly-owned by AMR means that profits at AE can be offset by expenses at AA, and it's all "AMR dollars." If you sell off the regionals (even if you manage to avoid a fee-for-departure contract), you start paying green dollars for the bodies delivered.

I'm not saying that I know the answer to this one. I would like for someone who understands it better to enlighten me.

Even after the downsizing of STL, AA may still have too much hub capacity.

In "classic" hub-and-spoke theory, having both STL and ORD as hubs is, prima facie, ridiculous. However, if the FAA ever truly gets serious about the traffic-induced delays at ORD, where does AA put the "banned" flights? There are a lot of connections made at ORD, that are made for no other reason than the inbound and outbound flights go through ORD. As far as the connecting passenger is concerned, I would imagine that they would prefer to connect at STL where all the flights are on one concourse. (of course, they would lose access to the grilled salmon sandwich at the Prairie Tap. 🙁 )

Other than STL, what other hubs would you close? RDU is not really a hub, per se, and that daily flight to London is wildly profitable from what I hear. Or, are you proposing downsizing all/some hubs and doing more point-to-point flying?

The secret to survival for the full-service legacy airlines is to get smaller as the pool of passengers shrinks; let go of the bottom 10% to 25% of the passengers - they can go fly WN or B6 or FL or they can take the bus.

You are proposing major psychiatric treatment for the airline management? Asking an airline to let go of even a money-losing passenger is like asking a Texan to give up his pickup truck!

 

[peasant]

Jim,

Yes, that to me is the headscratching thing about US legacy airlines.

In Europe, the "legacies" long ago gave up on the bottom 30% of pax, to charter flights in the old days and now to LCC. Airlines like AF/LH/BA seem much less obsessed with market share, more focused on profit.

 

[North by Northwest]

"There are former Western employees working at Delta. " Including it's now (former Western employee) CEO.

 

[WorldTraveler]

peasant,
and isn't it interesting that the EU seems to have a better grasp of what it takes for each segment of the industry to succeed than does the US DOT? The EU encourages consolidation and elimination of the weakest players while Washington thinks it's their political responsibility to prop up any airline that can get an operating license. The EU also doesn't expect that every LCC should have free reign of every airport - even at the expense of having LCCs operate from more remote airports.

 

[aafsc]

peasant,
and isn't it interesting that the EU seems to have a better grasp of what it takes for each segment of the industry to succeed than does the US DOT? The EU encourages consolidation and elimination of the weakest players while Washington thinks it's their political responsibility to prop up any airline that can get an operating license. The EU also doesn't expect that every LCC should have free reign of every airport - even at the expense of having LCCs operate from more remote airports.

[post="251926"][/post]​

The European Union also, unlike the US government, is not obsessed with decimating the compensation of airlines employees.

 

[BoeingBoy]

Does anyone know if the 777LR has the range to serve SYD from the US?

[post="251077"][/post]​

It should - as I recall Boeing touts the range as almost 10,000 miles.

Jim

ps - went back and found the AWST article....

"Using options fuel tanks, the 777-200LR has the range to carry 301 passengers in a tri-class configuration for 9,420 naut. mi. "It's going to have the capability of connecting just about any two cities in the world, non-stop," 777 Program Manager Lars Q. Andersen commented last week during a roll out ceremony here at the home of Boeing's wide-body production."