ExpressJet branded flying

[stooge]

I would love to get into this debate about what passengers want from airlines, but have a quick question for you xjetters.

What is the jumpseating policy on the branded flying and who do we call to list?

Thanks in advance. I love the new routes, I would have never imagined direct service from mci to tus. anything to avoid going through dfw.

 

[Superpilot92]

Who's to say you logic isn't way off?

It usually is. He does nothing but flamebait.

 

[Avpilot]

I would love to get into this debate about what passengers want from airlines, but have a quick question for you xjetters.

What is the jumpseating policy on the branded flying and who do we call to list?

Thanks in advance. I love the new routes, I would have never imagined direct service from mci to tus. anything to avoid going through dfw.

Forgive me if this isn't a complete answer, as everything is new with this and we employees don't have all the information yet...but I believe you can list at the gate as we are CASS. It should be little hassle at all. Welcome aboard. There may be a number to call but I don't have it. Take care.

Tim

 

[captjim]

XJT on SAT news

http://www.ksat.com/video/11514035/index.html

http://www.ksat.com/video/10937927/index.html

 

[msuspartans24]

Part of me is just flabergasted that the bosses running XJT actually think this will work.

yeah what do they know, I think that they just started working in the industry a couple months ago....I'm sure someone as smart and experienced as you would do a much better job.................TOOL

 

[drinksonme]

The next time you sit on a ERJ see how far you can strech your feet out under the seat. Then look at how close your knees are to the seat infront of you. Then notice how thick the seatback and a$$ padding is. Then take a look at how wide the seat is, arm rest to arm rest. After you put your micrometer and ruler away do it again on a 737, especially a CAL 737. I bet you will be surprised. Just flew to PHX on XJET, and then back on CAL. I had more leg room and padding on XJET then CAL.

Smaller head room on a ERJ when standing is obvious. However, when was the last time you had to stand holding a pole on an airplane. All a matter of preception.

 

[theo]

You mean the XJT pilots are funding the project. I'm sure Kellner is still overpaid.
Regarding price and times, I see XJT offering a $183 non-stop RT ONT-AUS April 23, 23. Outbound is 0700-1200, return 0800-0918. Pretty darn good times for a business traveler.
.

Just on the surface if you are right than they have a very big problem. It is around 1190 miles ONT-AUS if you are getting $180 roundtrip thats $90 each way...subtract taxes and you have about $81 left to cover your costs and make a profit. If you were 100% full you would pull in $4500 divide that by 1190miles and 50 seats and you get a RASM of $.756 if your costs exceed
.756 per mile than you are losing money. If I recall ExJet was in the .12 or .13 asm cost. But lets give you the benefit of the doubt and say you can get your costs down to $.10 per mile so each flight is producing a loss of $1465 per FLIGHT. So now you fly the airplane two round trips per day in the market and you lose $5860 per day on this one market with a 100% load factor. With two round trips that is almost one whole aircraft ...although with point to point scheduling you may get in another leg at 100% load factor you add another $1465 loss to make one aircraft for one day lose $7325 multiply that by 30 days and one aircraft has now lost $219,750 multiply that by 44 aircraft and your monthly loss is $9.7 million per month multiply that by 12 months and this little experiment has now lost over $116 million per year. Not to mention that you took 67 aircraft that were making a profit of 0ne million per year? (Thats a guess, but if I recall you made about $265 million last year and had about that number of aircraft.) So now you lose that $67 million add in the $116 million from this new operation and your new profit is a net profit next year of $82 million. Bad but not death yet, right? Well remember this is at 100% load factor. If you take that down to 75% load factor your loss goes up to $200 million on the branded operation and a loss of the $67 million in profit that you made. Now the situation is a loss for ExpressJet of 2 million annually. If none of your other costs increase and you keep making the same level of profit on your other COEX flying.

My belief is it will force Express Jet into bankruptcy, where they can dump the unwanted aircraft back to CO.This is why you are in for a rough time with this airline. You will lose so much money that the entire company will quickly be in jeopardy. When that happens you wont be able to escape fast enough.
I hope I am wrong, but you need to keep your options open and when the signs get more obvious. And they will, don't be the last one out the door.

 

[louisbarrow]

I hope I am wrong.

No you don't. You want us to fail so you will feel like a big man.

 

[B-J-J Fighter]

Just on the surface if you are right than they have a very big problem. It is around 1190 miles ONT-AUS if you are getting $180 roundtrip thats $90 each way...subtract taxes and you have about $81 left to cover your costs and make a profit. If you were 100% full you would pull in $4500 divide that by 1190miles and 50 seats and you get a RASM of $.756 if your costs exceed
.756 per mile than you are losing money. If I recall ExJet was in the .12 or .13 asm cost. But lets give you the benefit of the doubt and say you can get your costs down to $.10 per mile so each flight is producing a loss of $1465 per FLIGHT. So now you fly the airplane two round trips per day in the market and you lose $5860 per day on this one market with a 100% load factor. With two round trips that is almost one whole aircraft ...although with point to point scheduling you may get in another leg at 100% load factor you add another $1465 loss to make one aircraft for one day lose $7325 multiply that by 30 days and one aircraft has now lost $219,750 multiply that by 44 aircraft and your monthly loss is $9.7 million per month multiply that by 12 months and this little experiment has now lost over $116 million per year. Not to mention that you took 67 aircraft that were making a profit of 0ne million per year? (Thats a guess, but if I recall you made about $265 million last year and had about that number of aircraft.) So now you lose that $67 million add in the $116 million from this new operation and your new profit is a net profit next year of $82 million. Bad but not death yet, right? Well remember this is at 100% load factor. If you take that down to 75% load factor your loss goes up to $200 million on the branded operation and a loss of the $67 million in profit that you made. Now the situation is a loss for ExpressJet of 2 million annually. If none of your other costs increase and you keep making the same level of profit on your other COEX flying.

My belief is it will force Express Jet into bankruptcy, where they can dump the unwanted aircraft back to CO.This is why you are in for a rough time with this airline. You will lose so much money that the entire company will quickly be in jeopardy. When that happens you wont be able to escape fast enough.
I hope I am wrong, but you need to keep your options open and when the signs get more obvious. And they will, don't be the last one out the door.

Thats pretty doom and gloom. I hope they make it, as well as make money with the branded flying. It would be nice to see a company with a good contract prosper and take care of there employees (pilots) at the same time.

 

[captjim]

Just on the surface if you are right than they have a very big problem. It is around 1190 miles ONT-AUS if you are getting $180 roundtrip thats $90 each way...subtract taxes and you have about $81 left to cover your costs and make a profit. If you were 100% full you would pull in $4500 divide that by 1190miles and 50 seats and you get a RASM of $.756 if your costs exceed
.756 per mile than you are losing money. If I recall ExJet was in the .12 or .13 asm cost. But lets give you the benefit of the doubt and say you can get your costs down to $.10 per mile so each flight is producing a loss of $1465 per FLIGHT. So now you fly the airplane two round trips per day in the market and you lose $5860 per day on this one market with a 100% load factor. With two round trips that is almost one whole aircraft ...although with point to point scheduling you may get in another leg at 100% load factor you add another $1465 loss to make one aircraft for one day lose $7325 multiply that by 30 days and one aircraft has now lost $219,750 multiply that by 44 aircraft and your monthly loss is $9.7 million per month multiply that by 12 months and this little experiment has now lost over $116 million per year. Not to mention that you took 67 aircraft that were making a profit of 0ne million per year? (Thats a guess, but if I recall you made about $265 million last year and had about that number of aircraft.) So now you lose that $67 million add in the $116 million from this new operation and your new profit is a net profit next year of $82 million. Bad but not death yet, right? Well remember this is at 100% load factor. If you take that down to 75% load factor your loss goes up to $200 million on the branded operation and a loss of the $67 million in profit that you made. Now the situation is a loss for ExpressJet of 2 million annually. If none of your other costs increase and you keep making the same level of profit on your other COEX flying.

My belief is it will force Express Jet into bankruptcy, where they can dump the unwanted aircraft back to CO.This is why you are in for a rough time with this airline. You will lose so much money that the entire company will quickly be in jeopardy. When that happens you wont be able to escape fast enough.
I hope I am wrong, but you need to keep your options open and when the signs get more obvious. And they will, don't be the last one out the door.

I'm sure you know that marketing adjusts the price of a seat based on number of seats sold, time until flight, and a ton of other factors, $180 is not what everyone pays for a ticket. Being the Boyde of flightinfo, I'm sure you know that.

 

[aewanabe]

Full disclosure: I am a pilot for Chautauqua so my opinions are completely from an outside perspective. For whoever said CHQ is a well-run company, well thanks but not really. We have a fantastic pilot group that really takes care of each other on the line, but the management here really sucks lately. They know how to grow the airline but not a damned thing about running it.

For the branded flying, I think you nay-sayers will be surprised. IFE and food coupled with point-to-point service may sway plenty of business travelers; will y'all be able to charge enough to make money with it? I don't really see many other valid comparisons with Indy air; very small percentage of the fleet is dedicated to this operation and you're not going head to head with a bloated, bankrupt 500 lb. gorilla.

ERJ vs. mainline comfort? Depends who you ask. Any blanket statement here will be false. If you've improved the seat padding that goes a long way towards fixing the problem, but my biggest beefs riding on these things are the curved fuselage wall and the hard, thin armrests that cut off the circulation in my arms. Also the A seat is great but what about the F seat with someone in D? Nowhere to put your feet then. I'd rather be in a middle on mainline than in an F seat with a fatty next to me...

Finally XJET vs CHQ performance. Plain and simple, incompetent management combined with an adversarial POI. STD weights of 195 lbs in winter PLUS 30 lbs for every freakin valet bag means big trouble. Funny 4 years ago when everyone weighed 175 plus 12 for a carry-on we weren't falling outta the sky.

Xjetters, I sincerely wish you luck. Successful branded flying is going to be good for everyone in the industry. Fellow CHQers, try to remember CHQ equals great pilots, ********************ty management. I'm done defending the pyramid gang in Indy. Now please resume your regularly scheduled bashing....

 

[azpilot]

My belief is it will force Express Jet into bankruptcy, where they can dump the unwanted aircraft back to CO.This is why you are in for a rough time with this airline. You will lose so much money that the entire company will quickly be in jeopardy. When that happens you wont be able to escape fast enough.
I hope I am wrong, but you need to keep your options open and when the signs get more obvious. And they will, don't be the last one out the door.

Uh, we had the choice to give the planes back to CAL and said no thanks. So why would we have kept them? Why not file for bankruptcy today? Not saying we will be successful. I think on the lucrative routes, the ones we prove as being lucrative, the competition will come in and give us headaches. We still get 75% of our revenue from CAL so we can lose money on branded and still survive. I don't think this is the plan. If it was we would have given all or some of the planes back to CAL.

And as one other person said. I believe you and the other gloom and doomers wish this to be a failure. You must enjoy working for companies with crappy work rules and poor management. Something you will not find at ExpressJet.

 

[Autoparts2]

Ticket price

I am in no way affiliated with xjet. I am just a paying pax.

ABQ-ONT on Southwest with a stop in PHX.... 164.00 one way
Travel Time 3:30


ABQ - ONT non-stop on XJET 164.00 one way
Travel time.... 1:25

I'll take Xjet all day long.

Good luck guys/gals

Will see you on this route frequently

 

[theo]

I'm sure you know that marketing adjusts the price of a seat based on number of seats sold, time until flight, and a ton of other factors, $180 is not what everyone pays for a ticket. Being the Boyde of flightinfo, I'm sure you know that.

Wow, really? If you will look at the original post I was responding to another of your over enthusiastic brethren touting low fares as why Express Jet was going to be successful. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and gave him a 100% load factor to illustrate why his thinking was flawed. Yes I am aware that each flight offers a variety of fares and any airline depends upon obtaining the higher fare paying passengers as well as the leisure travelers. But the bottom line is you still have to bring in more than you spend. As the fare goes up the passenger demand will deteriorate. Without the low fares many of your markets will not have the demand to fill the seats. Hence your right back in the soup again. And using ONT-AUS as an example again travel tomorrow and returning friday offers the highest fare on Express Jet 311 each way or 622 round trip, not including Airport imposed PFC's. Great, now your making money, right? Well at the same time you are asking for 622 Expedia shows US offering a flight for $394 round trip a savings of at least $228. Now some will take the non stop but others will opt to save the money. When that happens you have your problems. Will there be enough of the high paying passengers to turn a profit. I don't believe so. I guess only time will tell. Just keep your ears and eyes open for signs that show it going south. When it happens don't wait around till the end get out when the getting is good.

 

[theo]

I am in no way affiliated with xjet. I am just a paying pax.

ABQ-ONT on Southwest with a stop in PHX.... 164.00 one way
Travel Time 3:30


ABQ - ONT non-stop on XJET 164.00 one way
Travel time.... 1:25

I'll take Xjet all day long.

Good luck guys/gals

Will see you on this route frequently

Just a couple of questions. Did you fly the non stop United Express flights when they operated? Were there full passenger loads on those flights? why did they pull the service? This market is a perfect example of flawed route planning. It has been tried and it failed. When it failed it had the UA code and frequent flyer program as an added inducement, excellent name recognition, and was included in all res sytems and distribution channels. You may welcome the service. The problem is there just aint enough of you to make it profitable.

 

[CVG72]

And using ONT-AUS as an example again travel tomorrow and returning friday offers the highest fare on Express Jet 311 each way or 622 round trip, not including Airport imposed PFC's. Great, now your making money, right? Well at the same time you are asking for 622 Expedia shows US offering a flight for $394 round trip a savings of at least $228. Now some will take the non stop but others will opt to save the money. When that happens you have your problems. .[/quote]


Time IS money. Business travellers don't have TIME. I am a perfect example of a paying pax out of CVG who pays triple to fly direct on delta. Time is my main problem. And CVG IS the most expensive city to fly out. Many around here will drive to Dayton and then take fligths with connections. That's true. But NOT the business travellers which I think is what express jet is trying to cater to.

 

[Superpilot92]

I'm sure you know that marketing adjusts the price of a seat based on number of seats sold, time until flight, and a ton of other factors, $180 is not what everyone pays for a ticket. Being the Boyde of flightinfo, I'm sure you know that.

Thats exactly what it seems like!! Hey Theo PLEASE go to www.XJET.com and apply for our CEO position you have no business flying airplanes with that mind of Gold you have. Thanks for your time!!

 

[theo]

Time IS money. Business travellers don't have TIME. I am a perfect example of a paying pax out of CVG who pays triple to fly direct on delta. Time is my main problem. And CVG IS the most expensive city to fly out. Many around here will drive to Dayton and then take fligths with connections. That's true. But NOT the business travellers which I think is what express jet is trying to cater to.

I agree that some will pay for the convenience. And I agree that Express Jet is aiming at those passengers. The problem is there just are not enough like you to make them successful in most of the markets they are flying. But thank you for your business, we do appreciate the fact that you are willing to pay a good fare for the convenience of non stops. Too bad there were not enough of you to keep DL out of bankrupcy either.

 

[jonjuan]

Wow, really? I don't believe so. I guess only time will tell.

This is why, Junior, why you are briefing the stew on your overnights and management is pulling the strings. They'll be just fine. Trust me.

 

[BoilerUP]

So theo, you went from GoJets to Delta eh?