NBC says Comair is not an airline

[JECKEL]

NBC aviation analyst Micheal Boyd said this morning on the 8am national news that Comair is not an airline at all, and the public needs to understand that.

"Comair is nothing more than an entity that leases flight crews to Delta Airlines."

I guess that about says it.

 

[chperplt]

All I can do is laugh... Mr. Boyd is such a dumb ass.

 

[Frank Bama]

Well ya, everyone knows that Micheal Boyd and Miles O'Brien are absolute aviation experts.....

The media makes me sick!!!!

 

[jetexas]

That's OK. NBC is not a 'real' TV channel. Reality shows, made for TV movies, etc. blagggh.

 

[Splert]

Is an ACMI company an 'Airline' just because they fly aeroplanes?

Splert

 

[Capt. Caucasian]

Well, Boyd is right. Comair as well as ASA, SkyWest, ExpressJet, Eagle, Mesa, Mesaba, Pinnacle, etc, etc, etc are not real "airlines" in the true since of the word. All we do is provide our services (pilots and sometimes airplanes) to network carriers. Now, if we advertised our own brand and sold our own seats then it would be a different story.

Frats,

 

[doh]

What was his point in saying that? Was he just looking for face time? How would understanding that we aren't an airline in the traditional sense change what happened? Or is he just saying blame Delta because they handle all our systems through Delta Technologies (yet another wholly owned subsidiary of BigD Inc.)? WTFO

 

[JetPilot_Mike]

We at Comair have know Boyd is a dumba$$ since the crap he was saying during our strike. I feel bad for the companies that hire him as a consultant.

 

[sleepy]

Well, Boyd is right. Comair as well as ASA, SkyWest, ExpressJet, Eagle, Mesa, Mesaba, Pinnacle, etc, etc, etc are not real "airlines" in the true since of the word. All we do is provide our services (pilots and sometimes airplanes) to network carriers. Now, if we advertised our own brand and sold our own seats then it would be a different story.

Frats,

But they have a 121 operating certificate. The FAA would say that they are an airline. They just rent baggage handling and reservation services from DAL.

 

[bvt1151]

Whether or not an airline has a marketing department has nothing to do with this weeks fiasco's. This is just Boyd trying to get his face on TV and any chance to say I told you so, even if he has to take advantage of the ingorant media. Typical Boyd.

 

[AutoBus]

Whether or not an airline has a marketing department has nothing to do with this weeks fiasco's. This is just Boyd trying to get his face on TV and any chance to say I told you so, even if he has to take advantage of the ingorant media. Typical Boyd.

Comair is NOT an airline, they are a provider of lift to a single customer. Don't kid yourselves, without Delta, Comair could NOT fuction, could not survive on it's own. All RJ operators are a house of cards, built on shakey ground. If Comair only got 100% of the incremental revenue for all the passengers it flys, it would be broke in a few months (look at independence air).

The only way the RJ model works, is the somewhat mistaken belief on the part of the major partners that they can lose a few bucks on each RJ passenger because the will make it up on the mainline portion. However since the early 2000's (due to depressed ticket yields) this model is no longer valid. This is one of the main reasons UAIR will fail .

 

[foofighter145]

Boyd is correct, don't let your ego and dreams get in the way of logic and reality

 

[Palerider957]

Comair is NOT an airline, they are a provider of lift to a single customer. Don't kid yourselves, without Delta, Comair could NOT fuction, could not survive on it's own. All RJ operators are a house of cards, built on shakey ground. If Comair only got 100% of the incremental revenue for all the passengers it flys, it would be broke in a few months (look at independence air).

The only way the RJ model works, is the somewhat mistaken belief on the part of the major partners that they can lose a few bucks on each RJ passenger because the will make it up on the mainline portion. However since the early 2000's (due to depressed ticket yields) this model is no longer valid. This is one of the main reasons UAIR will fail .

Without Delta interference, Comair would A) probably own Aitran
B) probably be flying A320's
C) probably be on the fast track to putting DAL out of business.

I'm not a Comair pilot, but I understand why they have such contempt for DAL. Comair was on the verge of great things when DAL leved the boom.

 

[foofighter145]

Probably, probably, & probably not

 

[AutoBus]

Without Delta interference, Comair would A) probably own Aitran
B) probably be flying A320's
C) probably be on the fast track to putting DAL out of business.

I'm not a Comair pilot, but I understand why they have such contempt for DAL. Comair was on the verge of great things when DAL leved the boom.

Yes it might have been, but that is then and this is now. And now Comair (and virtually all regional "wet lease" operators) are a mere shell of a company. They are artifically subsidized by thier mainline partners.

Seriously, within the next few years most 50 seater RJ's will be parked in the desert. The CASM's are not supported by the RASM's in the big (mainline) picture, although they might appear to make sense at the regional level (because mainline is paying you a fee per departure, greater than what is collected in actual fares).

To Comair's credit, they orginated the "fee per departure" practice for RJ flying in this country. The reason? Simple, they looked at the RJ ecomonics and compared them the the "pro-rate" fare they were getting from thier turboprop flying and saw that the RJ made no sense what-so-ever, but Delta wanted them anyway, so a deal was struck. And Delta agreed to pay a certain fee for each departure based on stage length, etc.. Thus making RJ flying a sure thing, for comair.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not down on RJ's completely, but the madness of supporting flying that in itself is not profitable cannot continue in this revenue environment.

Even Canadair understood the economics, they never anticipated selling as many RJ's as they did, they where thinking 15 to 20 aircraft sold per year with a mix of airline operators (for select high yield, light traffic routes) and corporate shuttle operators (GM, IBM, Xerox, etc).

Some of the larger RJ's have economics approaching mainline aircraft (on a CASM basis) and might make sense on lightly traveled / off hour higher yield markets, but even then you have to ask yourself, with razor thin profit margins, why would mainline want to fund a 5 to 8% margin at a regional, when it could fly route itself and keep the 5 to 8% margin it's giving away.

Yes you could always come back to the arguement that mainline profits form the incremental feed, even if it loses money on the regional traffic on a strictly CASM/RASM basis, there may have been some truth to that in the 90's, but I doubt that is true today with today's yield and in particular today's fuel prices.