Light Years
Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2002
- Messages
- 2,878
- Reaction score
- 0
Well Airways Magazine is incorrect. This was the original plan, but was scapped as it was easier and quicker to do it on the established certificate of US Airways Inc.WSurf said:Just picked up a current Airways Mag.(the one that has pictures of all the different airlines) which had a picture of MDA EMB-170 and under the picture it said Operated under the old Potomic Cert. so there you go.
Dont understand why they were given PDT Employee #'s, and then I heard they were grouped under our health care provider. Last time Potomic was flying, PDT had to babysit that airline, maybe we are going to babysit MDA also. 😉 😉
You'll remember that Potomac Air was a wholly owned Express carrier created to become DCAir in the the merger circus. When that didnt happen it was shut down, but the certificate was still valid.
The original post-concessions plan was to create MidAtlantic Airways (a name they apparently pulled out of thier ass, its not connected to anything)- a wholly owned US Airways Express carrier operated exclusively by furloughed US Airways empoyees ("a job for every one of my furloughed employees"). The aircraft type at that time was still undetermined. If I recall correctly, some of the original administrative employees of MidAtlantic Airways were actually from Potomac.
Later the idea of a wholly owned subsidiary was scrapped in favor of a division. I'm not sure if it had to do with conditions of the cert (expired? aircraft size?) or if it was just determined that it would be easier to put on the existing mainline certificate, but either way the Embraer 170s are on the US Airways Inc certificate. Indeed the call sign is "USAIR" as it is for all other aircraft, and flight attendants are current and qualified on all US Airways aircraft. They use the same manuals with an extra section for the E170. They do use seperate MAA employee numbers for bidding etc, but for travel and system seniority they retain thier mainline employee number (as do furloughed people who pass on MAA). I'm not sure of the significance of the recycled Piedmont (Express) numbers... Many new hire US Airways flight attendants in 2000/2001 were given recycled USAirways and US Airways Shuttle employee numbers, and that didnt mean anything, except make it confusing to determine seniority during crew briefings.
The FAA refers to it as US Airways-Embraer Division as does all paperwork. The aircraft wear US Airways Express titles and by the door it says "MIDATLANTIC-Operated by US Airways" (I tell ya, only at this airline...)
Its also worth noting that when the order for Embraer jets were placed the company had planned on operating them under the US AIRWAYS banner, not US Airways Express, and they were to have had a First Class cabin as well as coach. This is in all of the press releases. They never formally announced the change to Express titles/single class, in fact I think this site was the first to show a leaked picture from the factory in Brazil. Its been discussed to death here what a poor marketing choice this is and its already caused mass confusion for our customers due to the conflicting signage and E170 gate locations in PIT and PHL. The reasoning appears to be that an in-house alter-ego airline is not enough, that they want to subcontract even that flying to other airlines, and you cant call one Airways and one Express. They may have also felt that branding it as US Airways would cause more labor trouble and if they throw Express on it no one will pay attention (many mainline employees couldnt name a single Express carrier or identify an Express aircraft).