New Low Cost Carrier At Avp And Abe

[Robc98]

Just found out from airport authority today that new LCC to start service in March...737 aircraft to MCO 4 or 5 days a week nonstop....fares most likely 69-79 dollars each way....employment ad in local paper asking for pilots with 5000 or more hours and at least 20 flight attendants.....service out of AVP and possibly ABE....not sure of ABE yet though......no name for this airline yet...brand new.......looks like we'll have to get a little more competitive out of these small stations now.....BRING BACK MAINLINE!!

 

[mbmbbost]

They don't care a hoot about competing to FL (except on price) from lots of good size current mainline markets (LGA, BOS, PVD, MHT, etc....). I can't imagine that this will get much notice (even though it should). They seem to think FL doesn't really matter.

 

[robbedagain]

Just curious would the cities served be at MCO or SFB and so forth? Also I know that when a LCC airline wants to serve a midsized airport like ABE, the airport director will do whatever it takes. However I heard that SWA was not offered the same freebies that Southeast received for 2 yrs at ABE and that could be one reason that SWA chose PHL over ABE

 

[ILMgwm]

Bring back mainline all the time!! AVP,ABE and others are the heart of our core customer base. It's so sickening to sit here and wait for US to possibly cut my city ILM(surely we are on the list),and wait for them to reinstate service after 3 months. I wish the best for the employees that stayed and worked Mainline/Express. I ask myself everyday, what am i going to do?

 

[Bluestreak]

Are you folks that want to bring mainline back to these small cities willing to work for the same wages and under the same work rules as these low cost carriers? Are you willing to work for the same wages as Comair, CoEx, or ACA? That is who we are competing against in these markets. These other carriers provide the exact same service as U, but their employees cost half as much in pay and work rules.

 

[wings396]

Are you folks that want to bring mainline back to these small cities willing to work for the same wages and under the same work rules as these low cost carriers? Are you willing to work for the same wages as Comair, CoEx, or ACA? That is who we are competing against in these markets. These other carriers provide the exact same service as U, but their employees cost half as much in pay and work rules.

I would work for CO Ex wages in a heartbeat, as they are $3.60 an hour over what I earn now as Mainline Express. We made a profit for years in the small stations that were once our bread & butter. I can assure you that small station employees are twice as productive as Hub's and larger stations. As a FSA in a small station we load/unload, cater, deice, pushback, clean, work the bagroom, run mail/freight etc....On the other hand is a guy who sits in the bin in a hub waiting for the onload to come worth $7 an hour more???? I shall say NOT. The amount of $$$ that have been saved by Screwing the small stations by Expresing them is a drop in the bucket for what this outfit pisses away. I have watched our markershare dwindle as our selection of flights has been cut and replaced with the Dinky RJ's. If all of these LCC's see an opportunity with ABE and AVP as well as others, there must be some demand there. How can you go from King of the hill to nothing is less than 2 years??? Us Airways WAS the #1 carrier in ABE and AVP since the 1960's and now we watch as carriers such as Southeast invade our turf with our old A/C to boot. I look ot the window and see one of our former A/C sitting on our former gate taking our former passengers to their destinations.....Pathetic to say the least. If this strategy is applied around the system, we are all screwed!!!!

 

[robbedagain]

Southeast has made very good on keeping its flights full since it came to abe two yrs ago but now it appears that they are going to go away as Airtran may be coming in. Airtran will have absolutely no problem fillin gup their planes.
Just because ABE and AVP are small, it dont mean it is worth bringing in the jets.
We had at one time 5 or 6 jets and they did very well.

 

[Bluestreak]

Wings396,

You make some very good points. Are you saying they should pay the people who work at the hubs mainline express wages?

 

[robbedagain]

may be the folks working at the hubs should give it a try for a while and see how they feel about working almost for free at the mainline express. thenmayy be they would know how we the employees in the expressed out stations feel!

 

[tadjr]

Werent the Expressed stations given a choice of mainline cities they could transfer to? I know it stinks having to move (been there, done that), but there were options. If you chose to stay in the Express city, you knew what the pay was going to be and that was your choice, much like those of us in the other outstations that havent been Expressed, but who chose to stay where we were and going part time instead of having to move. We are currently down to only 4 hours a day and that is hard to get by on as well, but we all knew it was possible when we made the decision to stay here part time. We all had choices to make and none of them were pretty, but we did them for a reason.
Having said that, I dont think that the mainline express pay topout is what it should be either. I think the CO Express topout of $16 would be more realistic for those who are in Express stations. Its still not great, but its liveable considering you've based your spending on what you were making before. Its hard to compare what the other carriers are paying to what we are since most of the guys affected with US were topped out and not just getting into the job with the knowledge that $13 is all you will EVER make here. That IMO just isnt a fair argument to use when comparing wages. Of course anyone who starts out at Spirit, Airtran, or any of the other LCCs (excluding WN) knows that they will never make anywhere near the other carriers are currently making.
Is CWA going to be negotiating an MDA agreement like the other unions, or is Mainline Express the end of the line? I thought they were going to be two different things since there currently isnt any MDA flying. Can someone clarify this? I still havent received my new contract with all the changes in it so am a little confused about this.

 

[funguy2]

Southeast has made very good on keeping its flights full since it came to abe two yrs ago but now it appears that they are going to go away as Airtran may be coming in. Airtran will have absolutely no problem fillin gup their planes.
Just because ABE and AVP are small, it dont mean it is worth bringing in the jets.
We had at one time 5 or 6 jets and they did very well.

While I've assumed Southeast has done reasonably well at ABE, since they have remained in the market and even expanded, this AirTran bit is news to me... Where is the AirTran info coming from? Everything that I've seen from AirTran indicates that PHL is the place to be.

 

[robbedagain]

well from what I've heard is that Southeast is not accepting any bookings out of ABE for April. A couple of our inside agents tried and were told that the airlinemay pull out because of the ending of their freebie landings and that they arent making money. I also heard at the time that Airtran may come to ABE and AVP but I dont know for sure. I will try to find out more info.

 

[rvolkcpa]

The Southeast calendar on their website indicates flight availability from ABE through Monday, May 10th. I didn't try to actually book a flight.

Airtran flights from ABE to Florida would be good, but reinstatement of the US Airways flights 675 and 676 would be even better.

 

[wings396]

Wings396,

You make some very good points. Are you saying they should pay the people who work at the hubs mainline express wages?

Not at all, but I am saying that they hit the small station employees much to hard with wage reductions. Given what we do in comparison to them, why should we earn that much less than they do. Even if we have only a few mainline flights and some 50-70 seat RJ's, we are working every bit if not more than they are. We were sacrificed in the last go around of cuts, because we were the minority. When the Hubs voted on that contract they knew damn well they would never be working for $13 an hour. We do the jobs of 4 different Hub job classifications, those being Catering, Ramp, Utility, and Mtc with R&D and Deicing. I have worked in a large station in the past and I know what goes on with all of those specialized job functions. Bag and Cargo runners who put in maybe 3hrs of work in an 8hr shift.