NWA's Compass Airlines

[HighSpeedClimb]

Compass Airlines Begins Charting Its Course

Thu, 03 May '07
NWA Subsidiary Starts IAD-MSP Service

After a somewhat rocky gestation period, on Wednesday the first flight operating under the Compass Airlines banner carried 43 passengers from Washington Dulles International to Minneapolis... and did so two minutes ahead of schedule.

As Aero-News reported, Compass is a wholly-owned regional subsidiary of Northwest Airlines. The carrier, which will operate under the Northwest Airlink banner, currently flies a single 50-seat CRJ-200. The airline received operating certification from the FAA in April.
The airline has plans to add 36 Embraer EMB-175 jets to its fleet; the first 10 of those 76-seat airliners should be running by the end of the year.
Compass is one of three regional airlines operating for Northwest. Earlier this year, the Eagan, MN-based mainline carrier bought out Mesaba Aviation. Pinnacle Airlines also flies regional flights for Northwest.
For the moment, Compass runs twice-daily flights between IAD and MSP.

 

[Ex737Driver]

and who was flying it?

 

[hawk996]

If ALPA had any balls, The pilots should have been Indpendence Air pilots!!!!

 

[Jonny Sacko]

I don't know man, would you really want to go back?

 

[Av8tor]

If ALPA had any balls, The pilots should have been Indpendence Air pilots!!!!

They where X Independence air pilots!

 

[YourPilotFriend]

double post

 

[YourPilotFriend]

If ALPA had any balls, The pilots should have been Northwest Airlines pilots!!!!

Corrected for a spelling error.

 

[imadumbpilot]

If ALPA had any balls, The pilots should have been Indpendence Air pilots!!!!

All (or at least most) of the guys flying for Compass are X Indy guys as far as I know. I ran into one doing proving runs at IAD a few weeks back. BTW, they are also ALPA represented which I believe was a requirement of the NWA contract when they allowed the formation of Compass and the ability to fly 70 + seaters.

 

[BoilerUP]

FlightAware shows it as N601XJ...what callsign or three-letter identifier is Compass using?

 

[Going2Baja]

I thought all of the Compass guys were furloughed NWA....Did they not get any takers from the NWA guys?

Baja.

 

[SizzleChest]

CPZ

They had a contract out of the box and in place.... negotiated by NWA ALPA

 

[YourPilotFriend]

I thought all of the Compass guys were furloughed NWA....Did they not get any takers from the NWA guys?

Baja.

Recall has been offered to all the NWA pilots. Some have deferred, classes being filled up through fall, hiring starts the first of the year.

 

[Going2Baja]

Recall has been offered to all the NWA pilots. Some have deferred, classes being filled up through fall, hiring starts the first of the year.

Hiring for Compass or NWA? Or Both....

Baja.

 

[Occam's Razor]

Recall has been offered to all the NWA pilots. Some have deferred, classes being filled up through fall, hiring starts the first of the year.

Nice guess, Mr. Rainey!

Since you have no way of knowing how many pilots will return for Day1 only to drop Mil Lv orders (historical data might be a good place to start researching that), or the number of pilots who will resign when the option to defer is gone...your Guess should contain the suffix, "WA".

Pure WAG.

If you intend to staff the airline properly [insert skeptical chortle here], then you're gonna need to start hiring sooner.

You won't, of course. Which means you'll pay more for it when you need our help to generate more revenue...so that your obscene stock options will be worth something.

 

[Diesel-9]

Shack!!!

 

[NuGuy]

If you intend to staff the airline properly [insert skeptical chortle here], then you're gonna need to start hiring sooner.

[insert Butthead voice here]Uhuh, uhuh, huhuh, you said "staff"....

Nu

 

[accinelli]

Nice guess, Mr. Rainey!

Since you have no way of knowing how many pilots will return for Day1 only to drop Mil Lv orders (historical data might be a good place to start researching that), or the number of pilots who will resign when the option to defer is gone...your Guess should contain the suffix, "WA".

Pure WAG.

If you intend to staff the airline properly [insert skeptical chortle here], then you're gonna need to start hiring sooner.

You won't, of course. Which means you'll pay more for it when you need our help to generate more revenue...so that your obscene stock options will be worth something.

Who says the airline isn't staffed properly. As for help to generate revenue -- we got that with the forced open time provision and the TA. Please thank your friends and the union.

 

[Fly4hire]

Nice guess, Mr. Rainey!

If you intend to staff the airline properly [insert skeptical chortle here], then you're gonna need to start hiring sooner.

You won't, of course. Which means you'll pay more for it when you need our help to generate more revenue...so that your obscene stock options will be worth something.

Tim-mini-me's letter stated 20-25/month recall to train through the rest of the year. There are ~200 pilots on deferral who can be given the fish or cut bait option. Bypasses and MLOA's trickle back incrementally but don't have a huge impact in the short term.

Depending on how many of that 200 accept gives a range of needing new hires as early this fall or as late as next spring. A 50% acceptance rate would require ~Dec new hires on-line, which would dictate opening the hiring process up this summer. They have not even begun staffing for that eventuality yet.

I think you are correct they will screw this up as well, sadly at the cost of untold millions in lost revenue because we'll have to draw down the schedule to accommodate the crew shortages......and these guys get bonuses so as to retain executive talent?

 

[Occam's Razor]

Who says the airline isn't staffed properly.

Me.

It's in compliance with 24.B.(2) of the contract, but they aren't carrying enough operational bodies to cover extraordinary events, the increase in sick calls, the increases in pop-up Mil Leave, and the ability of pilots to shift vacation days in a month.

The number of flights we've canceled due to lack of pilots indicates I'm right.

As for help to generate revenue -- we got that with the forced open time provision and the TA.

Gee, then how do all those open trips get there after bidding?

The Zero Open Time "solution" management got in the new contract has some inherent math problems. The bottom third in any category are already flying on the critical days each month, and the top third usually have vacation or some other unavailability. That leaves roughly the middle-third to soak up all the unbid time. Since there's a cap on sked value at the end of bidding for each pilot, we end up with just about the same amount of Open Time we had two years ago.

Please thank your friends and the union.

Go pi$$ in someone else's Wheaties. It was hardly voluntary. If you want to blame your fellow pilots for management's failure to properly staff the operation even after we give them relief, then go ahead...but please append all such posts with the disclaimer: My buttplug makes me cranky!

 

[Jonny Sacko]

My buttplug makes me cranky!

And once again, I busted out laughing outloud. Too Funny.