United will increase RJ flying!

[Lampshade]

United Streamlines Operations to Compete in Unprecedented Fuel Environment
Wednesday June 4, 8:00 am ET
Company Announces 17 Percent Mainline Domestic Capacity Cuts by 2009
Reducing Fleet by 100 Planes, Eliminating Oldest and Least Fuel-Efficient Aircraft
Announces Executive Changes

CHICAGO, June 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- United Airlines today announced significant fleet, capacity and personnel changes, enabling the company to build a stronger, more competitive business better able to withstand record oil prices and a softening economy.

United will remove a total of 100 aircraft from its mainline fleet, including the 30 previously announced Boeing 737s, and reduce its mainline domestic capacity in the fourth quarter 2008 by 14 percent year over year. The company expects to retire all of its 94 B737s, provided it can work out terms with certain lessors, and six Boeing 747s. Over the 2008 and 2009 period, cumulative mainline domestic capacity will be reduced between 17 percent and 18 percent and cumulative consolidated capacity between 9 percent and 10 percent.

Capacity Fourth Quarter Full-year Full-year
(Available Seat Miles) 2008 2008 2009
(Versus FY 2007)

North America -14.5% to -13.5% -8.0% to -7.0% -18.0% to -17.0%
International -4.5% to -3.5% +1.5% to +2.5% -5.0% to -4.0%
Mainline -10.5% to -9.5% -4.0% to -3.0% -12.5% to -11.5%
Express +3.0% to +4.0% Flat to +1.0% +10.0% to +11.0%
Consolidated Domestic -11.5% to -10.5% -6.5% to -5.5% -13.5% to -12.5%
Consolidated -9.0% to -8.0% -3.5% to -2.5% -10.0% to -9.0%

Increasing RJ's will whacking mainline..Good Grief Tilton!

 

[General Lee]

Increasing RJ's will whacking mainline..Good Grief Tilton!

That's what people WANT obviously.....ask Fred Greed from the old Delta....he brought them to his new job at Virgin America, didn't he? Right? Thanks Fred....


Bye Bye--General Lee

 

[On Your Six]

I'll bet that the former E170s used at Frontier will be transferred over to UAL out of Denver. Is there some scope protection against that?

Adding more CRJs/ERJs wouldn't make a lot of economic sense either. And you'd pi$$ off a lot of business passengers who expect more comfort for the high ticket prices.

 

[kngarthur]

That's what people WANT obviously.....ask Fred Greed from the old Delta....he brought them to his new job at Virgin America, didn't he? Right? Thanks Fred....


Bye Bye--General Lee

Could you explain this a little you lost me!

 

[rod farva]

Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!! More RJ's!!! Yayyyyyyyyy!!! Is skywest hiring? I have 100 hours? Can I get a jet out of training? How long is the upgrade?

Jeesh.

 

[gator_hater]

Regionals are only less efficient if you carry the same # of people. Yes 150 people on 3 RJ's burn more gas than a 737 or MD-88, but 100 people on 2 RJ's burn about the same amount of gas and you get an option of when to fly.

They are less efficient but they do not use more gas, two different things. There is a place for them in a business plan the trick is placing them in the right place, at the right time, and in the right amount. That is a very complicated problem.

Are more RJ's the answer? I don't know, but someone with the big picture might.

 

[General Lee]

Could you explain this a little you lost me!

I was complaining about our ex President at Delta who wanted more RJs after 9-11, saying business people wanted "frequency"---not comfort. Then he moved to another airline, and never added RJs there. Sorry about the rant.


Bye Bye--General Lee

 

[Superpilot92]

The majors need to stop paying for all of the gas at the regionals and start pumping that money into their own companies. They are just giving away their "profits" or lack there of under the current business plans which evidently dont work. yet they keep doing the same things over and over, what a great plan

What they really need to do is get rid of the worthless greedy mgmt teams that have done nothing but destroy good airlines.

 

[kngarthur]

The majors need to stop paying for all of the gas at the regionals and start pumping that money into their own companies. They are just giving away their "profits" or lack there of under the current business plans which evidently dont work. yet they keep doing the same things over and over, what a great plan

What they really need to do is get rid of the worthless greedy mgmt teams that have done nothing but destroy good airlines.

Have you read the book Animal Farm by George Orwell ?

 

[Papa Woody]

I was complaining about our ex President at Delta who wanted more RJs after 9-11, saying business people wanted "frequency"---not comfort. Then he moved to another airline, and never added RJs there. Sorry about the rant.


Bye Bye--General Lee

I heard he did it just to piss you off.

 

[dojetdriver]

Adding more CRJs/ERJs wouldn't make a lot of economic sense either.

Since when has airline management ever exercised "economic sense"?

And you'd pi$$ off a lot of business passengers who expect more comfort for the high ticket prices.

That concept has proven itself to not be true over and over, and over, and over.

It's been shown, price is all that matters.

 

[generaltso]

That concept has proven itself to not be true over and over, and over, and over.

It's been shown, price is all that matters.

Until they get to the airport and see the plane they are on.

 

[dojetdriver]

Until they get to the airport and see the plane they are on.

Just curious, but have you ACTUALLY been in this industry?

 

[Cpt Oveur]

UAL is flying more regionals with first class seating, I would assume this is what they would prefer to increase, and not the 50 seat ERJ-145/CRJ-200 flying. Perhaps more turboprop flying as well?

 

[JetPilot_Mike]

Those "new" planes should have UAL furloughs in the left seat.

 

[jonjuan]

What they really need to do is get rid of the worthless greedy mgmt teams that have done nothing but destroy good airlines.

Who is "they?" Define good airlines?

 

[Yuppyguppy]

Two Words
$100 Oil
It's Re-Engineer-The-Business Time...
On An Emergency Basis
[FONT=Tahoma, verdana, lucida]Sector One: Small Lift Providers[/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma, verdana, lucida]Say Good-Bye To A Lot of Regional Jets, Real Soon.
Fuel Pass-Throughs Will Pass Them Directly To The Desert[/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma, verdana, lucida]JANUARY, 2008. It should be back-to-the-drawing-board time for small lift providers, what some still call "regional airlines." Maybe time for a period of sheer panic, too. The issue: 50-seat and smaller RJs are being economically marginalized by skyrocketing fuel costs. [/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma, verdana, lucida]Major carriers will be looking to quickly cull out dozens of RJs in the coming months. And hundreds more in the next five years, with no replacement for this lift - or many of the markets they operate - in sight.[/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma, verdana, lucida]Most SLP agreements provide for fuel costs to be a pure pass-through to the major carrier, and that means the majors are eating a lot of red ink. A lot of RJ mission applications that once provided adequate revenue generation are now net drains on major airline systems. They cannot but move quickly to restructure (read: reduce) the fleets of RJs they're leasing in.[/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma, verdana, lucida]Faster Retirements Than Predicted. The Boyd Group's Global Fleet Demand Forecasts were the first to predict the decline in demand for new RJs, and also to predict that the number in operation represented a glut. That was as far back as 1999, when other

consultants were still forecasting just the opposite from the comfort of their rearview mirrors, and the warmth of being within "the consensus.".[/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma, verdana, lucida]As attendees at our Annual Aviation Forecast Conference last October learned, retirements of CRJs and ERJs would result in global RJ fleets declining by over 1,200 units over the next ten years. [/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma, verdana, lucida]Now, with oil hovering at $100 a barrel, that forecast has been revised. The retirement projections are for over 1,700 RJs to come out of fleets for the same ten year period, with the rate front-loaded in the 2008 - 2013 period, representing approximately 835 RJs taken out of service in the US alone. [/FONT]

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[upndsky]

Just curious, but what is the scope limit at UAL re: RJs?

 

[Ben Dover]

People will complain about everything eventually.

Case in point:
Nine years ago an old college friend who now travel for business tells me, "I sure love those RJs, they are quiet and just as fast as the big planes. Beats the heck out of a turboprop."

Last year he tells me, "I sure hate flying RJs. The seats are so small and there is no room in the overhead."

 

[WMUSIGPI]

Those "new" planes should have UAL furloughs in the left seat.

No those airplanes should have UAL employees in all the crew seats.