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ASA and the E-120

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Old Crow

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 6, 2001
Posts
166
To those of you at ASA.

After the end of January, where are all of the E-120 crews going to fly?

What will be the remaining cities that the E-120 will serve after the end of January? Will it really take 14 a/c to serve this small amout of cities?

I can't see how it would be profitable to keep 14 A/C to fly back and forth to 6 cities. I really haven't noticed too many passengers sad over the retirement of the Brasilia...

I'm glad to see the proactive movement to satisy the customers by getting the jet service into the cities that they promised.

Good Job ASA.
 
Not the reality that one expects.

Whilst ASA may claim "jet service" to more and more cities and retirement of the E120 from the fleet, one should not be too surprised to hear that most recently a number of jet flights to various "upgraded" cities have been in fact "downgraded" back to the E120. I have several instances of where jet flights where downgraded to E120 not at a moment's notice, but rather hours if not days in advance, notifying cabin and cockpit crews as to the changes; and going so far as to construct trips of solely downgraded trips for crews.

What's the practical use of going all jet to city (or at least removing the E120) to only replace it with E120. Many passengers have booked with ASA so as to have jet service and then arrive at the airport only to discover a Burger King coloured chariot to take them to ATL. This is NOT the way to inspire customers and employees. If the company is not physically able to support going jet to a destination, then don't do it.

I wish I knew exactly where the problems lies - either 13 CRJs are collecting dust at the TOC or the company does not how to do their math. It will be interesting to see how the increased jet-expansion/prop-retirement plan at ASA will progress given recent events. Fortunately, I do not see ATL-YYZ being downgraded anytime soon - lucky Canucks.
 
There have been a bunch of downgrades over the past couple of months. While I'm not sure if it explains all the down grades, here is a partial explanation: A bunch of the ATRs are being cycled through the paint shop. This has seemed to cause more than a little chaos as Brasilias are used to replace the ATRs where they can, then I think when loads are high they have been shifting jets to ATR routes and Brasilias to Jet routes. Hopefully this will stabilize when the painting process is completed sometime this month or next.

As far as the Brasilia cities go, your guess is as good as mine. We do seem to be losing cities pretty fast though. Some will however retain partial Brasilia service.

One thing that everyone needs to remember here is that a lot of the cities the Brasilia serves will be hard to serve profitiably with the jet and still maintain that all important frequency. All these cities and people are screaming for jet service not realizing that their city cannot support high frequency 50 seat jet service. For example, when it was announced that Albany GA was being switched to jet service, it was also announced that the frequency would be dramitically cut. Well, the city was in an uproar, accusing ASA of all sorts of nasty things (not remembering that we are the ONLY airline that serve them.) Classic case of not being able to have your cake and eat it too.

I think it is some what foolish for some of these cities and this airline to be rushing to get rid of the small turboprops without having a suitable replacement (like perhaps new turboprops or the 32 seat Dork Jet.) It will eventually be like when we got rid of the Bandits, inevitably some of our smaller, low yeild cities will lose their service as a result of everyone demanding Jets.

I don't think the remaining 28 Brasilia's we will end up with will disappear that fast.

My $.02
 
According to the press releases, the E120s will only be going to GTR, AEX, LFT, MEI, MCN, VLD, LEX. On the ATL side (did I miss any?). It seems most of the DFW cities remain. It's kind of curious about the rumor of keeping 14 in ATL and 14 in DFW. Maybe that was more official "misinformation" to stem a mass exodus to the jet.
I don't see any way to justify 14 aircraft to fly to those cities.
On the other hand, if they keep downgrading jet flights, the 120s may have a future after all. It's funny how they can make such a pomp and circumstance about a city going all jet, then downgrade the 1st jet flight (and every one thereafter) to a Brasillia. Isn't that the old "bait and switch" trick?

I suspect that either some of the new jet cities will go back to Brasilias (Delta will tell ABY "sorry guys, we tried...") or we will be retiring a lot more of them then they're saying.
 

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