Will SWA keep the 717s?

[ASADFW7]

That is way too much math in the morning. Life isn't that complicated. Nothing happens fast at SWA, if it did we would have flights into ATL already.

 

[waveflyer]

I Agree w/ Lear-
Talk of furloughs is a bit crazy- I understand that AT does hold some sway over their destiny by their attitudes, but the reality is that furloughs are not what swa is about and the timeline doesn't make sense. A stronger economy, retirements kicking up, wright amendment and love field terminal revamp, expansion of ATL and the new York area- all points toward growth that would negate any short term accountant benefit to a furlough if we wanted to dump all 88 717's at once-

But here's the question: I've had enough conversations w/ mgmt folk to know there are a LOT of markets that swa has looked at in the past but need a slightly smaller a/c for them- ie: keeping smaller Texas cities and expanding to the savannah's and fresno's of the country- you'd never know Montana and Wyoming exist if you looked at our napkin. And we go to no seasonal mountain spots in Colorado-

How does the 717 perform? Is it more efficient than a -700 per seat? Can it perform out of Jackson hole or Aspen/ gunnison/ Durango? Do places like ICT work with it- or are those places subsidized by their cities?

I always thought swa could use a slightly smaller a/c and a larger one eventually- is the 717 just a stopgap or are the #'s good enough to keep long term?

With less than 200 ever built I'd imagine it's just a stop-gap, but if it's truly much cheaper than a -700.....

 

[Lear70]

That is way too much math in the morning. Life isn't that complicated. Nothing happens fast at SWA, if it did we would have flights into ATL already.

Been up for a while already...

As for the rest, I agree, just wanted to put it all down for those who might actually start worrying about this. We all have our worry-wart portions of our pilot list and my phone already has rung a couple times about it. Thankfully, with the internal drama du jour in the union, this rumor has been largely ignored. Hasn't even hit our internal message board yet.

 

[Lear70]

But here's the question: I've had enough conversations w/ mgmt folk to know there are a LOT of markets that swa has looked at in the past but need a slightly smaller a/c for them- ie: keeping smaller Texas cities and expanding to the savannah's and fresno's of the country- you'd never know Montana and Wyoming exist if you looked at our napkin. And we go to no seasonal mountain spots in Colorado-

How does the 717 perform? Is it more efficient than a -700 per seat? Can it perform out of Jackson hole or Aspen/ gunnison/ Durango?

In the summer? Absolutely not. The airplane is a dog high, hot, and heavy compared to the 737. Winter time? I don't think it would make 2nd segment in ASE fully-loaded going any real distance. It's been too long since I looked at the Jackson Hole 2nd segment numbers. Durango? Possibly, the exit vector down the valley isn't as steep as ASE if memory serves.

Do places like ICT work with it- or are those places subsidized by their cities?

That goes back to your first question about efficiency. Our loads in and out of ICT, when I've flown it on the 737, are pretty weak. Maybe 70-90 people on any given flight. I'm pretty sure it's not subsidized by the city, too much other major airline presence for that, so the yields on the ticket prices may be there to compensate. Accounting info I don't have access to. As far as more efficient than the -700 per seat? No. The 737's CASM is lower than the 717 by a fairly decent amount, but you don't want to run a 737 back and forth to ICT where the load's only 60%. That's what makes the 717 useful, is cities that won't support 4 daily 737's at a 60% LF, so you run 717's at 80% LF instead.

I always thought swa could use a slightly smaller a/c and a larger one eventually- is the 717 just a stopgap or are the #'s good enough to keep long term?

With less than 200 ever built I'd imagine it's just a stop-gap, but if it's truly much cheaper than a -700.....

Depends what you replace it with. Bombardier C-series 4-5 years from now? Then yes, likely a stop-gap. However, with the cheap cheap lease prices and most non-rotable MX paid for by Boeing, it has made the difference between AAI being a "worthy competitor" rather than just a footnote in aviation history.

Most people would say that the 717 deal by Joe Leonard saved this airline from extinction years ago and began the transformation into a profitable, major airline. If it was cost-efficient enough to contribute to that, I'd say it's likely worth keeping until a valid short-haul, small-community, high-yield replacement is found, but that's just my opinion. I'm sure there's many others.

 

[waveflyer]

Good to know- though I wish the numbers were better news- but you're right- it's why allegiant has scraped by w/ paid good deal md80's-
I do wish the 73 had system pages we could pull up on an mfd.... The automation definitely looks better.

Air tran has definitely received subsidies from Wichita-

"FAA: AirTran Wichita Subsidy is 'Unjust'
Posted: January 12th, 2011
MOLLY MCMILLIN and DION LEFLER
Wichita Eagle, Distributed by the Associated Press





The Federal Aviation Administration has called Wichita's subsidies to AirTran Airways "unjust economic discrimination" against another airline and given the city 30 days to say how it will remedy the situation.

AirTran and Delta Air Lines provide daily service from Wichita to Atlanta.

"Treating these two similarly situated air carriers differently could constitute a violation," said an April 6 letter from the FAA to the city.

Delta said it had asked the FAA to look into the subsidy and gave The Eagle a copy of the FAA response Friday. Representatives of the FAA could not be reached for comment late Friday.

At stake in the dispute are millions of dollars in future federal grant money for Wichita Mid-Continent Airport. Airports must agree to certain conditions to receive FAA grants for airport development. One of the conditions, spelled out in the FAA's Grant Assurance 22, is that the grant recipient not engage in "economic discrimination." Doing so jeopardizes access to FAA grants.

The city has maintained that the airport and the city are separate entities, so the city's subsidies should not affect the airport's grants. The subsidies are paid with city tax money. The airport does not receive city taxes for support.

"We still are of the opinion that the airport and the city are different," said City Manager George Kolb. "They have two different funding sources, and the funds do not mingle."

Kolb and Mayor Carlos Mayans said they had yet to see the letter and do not know how the city will respond....."

http://www.airportbusiness.com/article/article.jsp?siteSection=3&id=1832

 

[huronip]

SLI will be long-done by the time that happens.

Even if a deal like that IS done (which is only mental masturbation at this point, just like SWA merger talk over the last 5 years until it actually happened), Delta's slots for 800's will take a while to develop into actual airframes that can be swapped.

So let's talk some realities (which isn't popular here, I know, but I'm going to do it anyway).

1. SWA can't just dump ALL our 717's to DAL all at once right now, even if they wanted to. You're talking tens of thousands of passengers in advance bookings for the rest of this year that would suddenly not have planes to get on. There's too many flights to redistribute to the rest of your fleet and our fleet of 737's combined. Just not going to happen, even if a deal could be brokered that fast (unlikely, considering how long SWA analyzes issues to make big changes).

2. AirTran's fragmentation language in Sec 1 is pretty vague, as is most fragmentation languages in most ALPA contracts. It says that IF a large portion of the aircraft are sold (no trigger point specifically by ASM's or hull percentages or hard numbers), that the company will make "all best efforts" to ensure the pilots go with them. Doesn't guarantee it.

3. Assuming that SWA did sell the 717's to DAL at a high enough pace to result in furloughs (unlikely) and in such a way that would require them to stay on the AAI seniority list (if the pilots didn't go with the planes), it would result in HUGE bumps in training down the entire seniority list and a LOT of training money costs. Can't just furlough the 717 drivers, our contract requires the company to allow displaced pilots from an airplane to bid whatever they can hold. That means all our 717 pilots would bid to the 737, resulting in at least 500 full training events at $25,000 a pop. $12 Mil plus is a good chunk of change and that's just a low WAG.

4. Snapshot. The SLI negotiations are based on a snapshot of 9/27/2010. A previous poster was mentioning that 717 furloughees would go to the bottom of the SLI list being furloughed. Not likely. The lists were exchanged using a 9/27 snapshot. If we can't work it out in negotiations or mediation, we'll be in arbitration in 5 months. Unlikely that a large enough number of hulls will depart leaving people furloughed in less than 5 months and once arbitration starts, not only will they have an agreed list as of the 9/27 snapshot, but the arbitration will have already started with those people on-property. They don't get rearranged on a daily basis in that process.

5. Probably the most important point that goes back to what I was saying in the beginning: this deal would be a hull swap. They get a 717 for every 737 DELIVERY that comes on property. I don't think that's a bad idea at all, whatever makes the most sense financially is great for the health of the company, but that's going to take a good amount of time. Even at 3 deliveries a month at MOST, you're talking 24-26 months to take all 88 planes? That's over 2 years, and you can't do a 2:1 swap - not enough seats to put your pre-booked passengers in. There likely aren't going to be large furloughs within the next 7 months which brings me to my last point.

6. In 7 months the SLI will be done, including arbitration with a combined ISL and an implementation date from the arbitrators. It's unlikely this deal would be done and a large number of planes would be gone by that time (assuming it happens at all). In that case, furloughs (if any, which again, I doubt, given that it's a planes-for-slots deal and you can't just give them all the planes at once stranding the passengers) would come from a COMBINED seniority list. Side Letter 8 is in effect until the ATN pilots are represented by SWAPA, but the Process Agreement says that any disputes to the SLI are paid for by SWA management. I'm certain ATN ALPA would dispute any one-sided furloughs AFTER an ISL is reached, during which time integration would still continue.

Again, I don't think any of this is a real threat. I expect that SWA is carefully analyzing the 717's right now; its costs, its profitability, its strengths, its weaknesses, and deciding if they want to get those extra 717's out in the desert and add to the fleet on the cheap (I'm sure the leases could be had for a song right now) or if they want to get rid of them in a swap with DAL for new 737-800's. I doubt that analysis will happen in just a few weeks or months.

I'm not concerned; I think it will be more of a factor to watch in a combined AAI/SWA in 2012/2013, not something done in the next month or two. Could be wrong though; it's happened before.

Lear,

Very informative post. I'm with you I don't think anything like this would ever happen nor would I want it to. I just was thinking that all you reference here is a one for one swap from 717 to 737-800, but if SWA just wanted to keep the same number of ASM's then I figure they would only need around 59-60 800's to replace the 88 or so 717's assuming the 800 has the 175 seat configuration reducing the time frame for a swap which could result in a pilot surplus of around 340. Couple that with SWA already possibly replacing 3 and 500's with 800's and the numbers could go even higher.

On a good note though we got a memo yesterday saying we are understaffed for the summer by 150 pilots. Lot's of premium flying in the month's ahead.

 

[scoreboardII]

If you are showing ICT has light loads, then I wager we'll drop places like that. ICT is what, 90 minute drive to OMA or MCI? Unless the loads are there, they won't run a quadfecta SFO/SJC/OAK operation.

I heard for seasonal op's into those snowy places, we would be using the 700/800, again for loads, all back to DEN.

 

[taters]

If you are showing ICT has light loads, then I wager we'll drop places like that. ICT is what, 90 minute drive to OMA or MCI? Unless the loads are there, they won't run a quadfecta SFO/SJC/OAK operation.

I heard for seasonal op's into those snowy places, we would be using the 700/800, again for loads, all back to DEN.

try a 5 hour drive to OMA.....it takes 90 min to fly there in a bonanza

 

[Secret Squirrel]

I thought the information that AAI was putting out when I got hired was that the 717 had a lower CASM on segments under 500 miles. AAI got those 717 for CHEAP. Plus 25 more that could probably be picked up for the economies of scale should be quite a match for a much more expensive 700-800 on short segments. I am sure SWA has the accountants crunching the numbers as we speak to finalize the 10 year plan.

 

[waveflyer]

try a 5 hour drive to OMA.....it takes 90 min to fly there in a bonanza

+1
someone needs google maps!
;-)
ICT-OMA= 331 miles, 5:30 drive
ICT-MCI= 213 miles, 3:30 drive time
ICT-OKC= 164 miles, 2:47
ICT-TUL= 179 miles, 2:59

OAK-SFO= 30 miles, :40 mins
OAK-SJC= 35 miles, :44 mins
SFO-SJC= 35 miles, :42 mins
OAK-SMF= 99 miles, 1:44 drive

ICT-OMA is like the bay tri???
SJC-BUR= norcal-socal 331 miles, 5:31

Spelling? Who cares? But geography, pilot??
;-)

Wichita is a big aviation city, but of all things- I'm confident our marketing people will square it away