Rj's Are Going Goin Gone
- Thread starter Gibstr
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BoeingBoy
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It was discussed in this thread a couple or three days ago. It's already down to the middle of page 2 so it's not surprising you missed it.
In short, a bunch of the 50-seaters will be going somewhere other than flying domestically. Whether that's the desert or overseas remains to be seen.
FlyI has already gotten rid of some CRJ-200's and all their remaining may be sitting idle at some point in the not-to-distant future.
United effectively dumped 70 50-seaters on US-East by way of Air Wisconsin. They expect to have over 100 Emb-170's flying for them by the end of next year.
Delta is expected to get rid of some during their BK, primarily at Comair.
Northwest is talking about starting a new division to fly 70 to 90-seaters and reducing the number of 50-seaters.
Bombardier has announced ending production of the CRJ-200's in Jan 2006.
Embraer hasn't announced anything yet, but they only have 70-80 remaining orders for 50-seat and under models.
Mike Boyd, who forecast the end of the 50-seat RJ market quite a while back, says even the CRJ-700 and 900's days are numbered. You can read his comments in this week's hot flash.
Jim
In short, a bunch of the 50-seaters will be going somewhere other than flying domestically. Whether that's the desert or overseas remains to be seen.
FlyI has already gotten rid of some CRJ-200's and all their remaining may be sitting idle at some point in the not-to-distant future.
United effectively dumped 70 50-seaters on US-East by way of Air Wisconsin. They expect to have over 100 Emb-170's flying for them by the end of next year.
Delta is expected to get rid of some during their BK, primarily at Comair.
Northwest is talking about starting a new division to fly 70 to 90-seaters and reducing the number of 50-seaters.
Bombardier has announced ending production of the CRJ-200's in Jan 2006.
Embraer hasn't announced anything yet, but they only have 70-80 remaining orders for 50-seat and under models.
Mike Boyd, who forecast the end of the 50-seat RJ market quite a while back, says even the CRJ-700 and 900's days are numbered. You can read his comments in this week's hot flash.
Jim
robbedagain
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does that mean that FlyI is pretty much all finished up with the flying? Are they headed to ch7? And when does NWA plan on their 70-90 seaters? Will they be the EMB-170s or CRJ-700;900?
BoeingBoy
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Well, the history of this industry is that an airline can hang on a long time but that's based on a few big airlines that have eventually gone under. In the case of FlyI....
They lost almost $100 million in 2Q05 and burned thru about $100 million in cash between 6/30/04 and 6/30/05. They were down to about $65 million in unrestricted cash at the end of 2Q05.
With the arrival of the A319's and reduction in CRJ-200's, their CASM had declined from over 18 cents to 17.1 cents between 2Q04 and 2Q05. Not exactly "low cost" for them to be competing as a "low cost carrier". The speculation is that UAL will spread the coming Emb-170's (27 by the end of 05 and 77 more next year) between ORD and IAD, putting furthur pressure on FlyI with a more comfortable, capable airplane offering a mainline "experience" - 3 classes of service (F/C with 38" seat pitch, economy plus with 33" pitch, and coach, plus the normal UAL mainline inflight service.
NWA hasn't been specific on airplane type that I've seen, but I think I may have "mis-spoke" - they may be planning on the new division flying 70-100 seaters. That's pretty much the Emb-170/190 family.
They lost almost $100 million in 2Q05 and burned thru about $100 million in cash between 6/30/04 and 6/30/05. They were down to about $65 million in unrestricted cash at the end of 2Q05.
With the arrival of the A319's and reduction in CRJ-200's, their CASM had declined from over 18 cents to 17.1 cents between 2Q04 and 2Q05. Not exactly "low cost" for them to be competing as a "low cost carrier". The speculation is that UAL will spread the coming Emb-170's (27 by the end of 05 and 77 more next year) between ORD and IAD, putting furthur pressure on FlyI with a more comfortable, capable airplane offering a mainline "experience" - 3 classes of service (F/C with 38" seat pitch, economy plus with 33" pitch, and coach, plus the normal UAL mainline inflight service.
NWA hasn't been specific on airplane type that I've seen, but I think I may have "mis-spoke" - they may be planning on the new division flying 70-100 seaters. That's pretty much the Emb-170/190 family.
N924PS
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Too bad what remains of the U.S. aircraft manufacturing sector dropped the ball on this niche of airliner.
I miss the days of "Regional Aircraft" such as the Convair 580, B737-200, DC-9, little Fokker's. Hopefully, the 50 seat RJ's can be fitted with remote controls and used as target drones at Tyndall AFB down in Florida. A fitting end to a product that was only used by its purchasers to outsource flying and jobs to lower wage enitities.
robbedagain
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thanks boeing boy!
wings396
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I couldn't have said it any better myself!!!! Those Damn things were nothing more than a tool to screw everyone in the Industry out of a decent wage. Now that everyone has been "Expressed" to death, they can go rot in Boneyard. Nearly 3/4 of the System is Express earning poverty level wages.
FLYi would be dead if a) GE hadn't cut them a deal and started taking back CRJs while stretching out aircraft payments, and b) Airbus refunded (!) a bunch of deposits on aircraft that they delayed delivery of. One can understand GE's motives -- they are exposed as they have financed a large chunk of the global CRJ fleet (think DL), and now the economics have changed they're not in a good spot. Orderly return makes more sense than dumping aircraft in bankruptcy. Why Airbus handed back money when I think there's zero chance of the aircraft ever being delayed is beyond me.
Frankly, I'm surprised they are still flying, but unless they pull a rabbit very quickly out their hat, I predict FLYi will stop flying before the end of the year. I don't think they have the unencumbered assets left to go Ch. 11. I think it will be a Midway-style Chapter 7 for them.
(Now that I'm on the record, that probably guarantees that they get a $500M DIP loan from GE to do a Ch. 11 reorg next week!_
lostplanetairman
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Airbus only refunded the deposits because Spirit grabbed the planes to accelerate their fleet transformation.
Hello Newman
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IN HIS HASTE TO "RJ' THE SYSTEM, SEIGEL DROPPED MORE ROUTES ON MESA THAN
THEY COULD HANDLE, LEADING TO IRREGULARITIES, CREW SHORTAGES AND
SLOPPY SERVICE. THESE PLANES WERE INTENDED TO SUPPLEMENT THE BIG JETS,
NOT REPLACE THEM.
Dave knew exactly what he was doing. He was quoted on Plane Business, well before he came to US, that Rj's would have a negative impact on scope clauses.
The U BOD knew exactly what they were doing, and what you have today was planned years ago.
And, if I'm guessing right, the restructuring at U is not over yet.
Expect rightsizing at Ueast to continue.
The U BOD knew exactly what they were doing, and what you have today was planned years ago.
And, if I'm guessing right, the restructuring at U is not over yet.
Expect rightsizing at Ueast to continue.
BoeingBoy
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That's something I wouldn't bet against. However, I hope it's intelligent rightsizing - something Parker seems to understand.
The website only shows the combined fleets now, so from memory HP had about 1 RJ for every 3 mainline airplanes. Of those, 2/3 were CRJ-900's leaving about 1 50-seater per 9-10 mainline airplanes. Of course, this is before the CRJ-900's started moving east.
On the other side of the country, we have (or will shortly) about 2 50-seat RJ's per 3 mainline airplanes - a ratio 6 time higher than HP had. As FlyI has amply demonstrated, it's hard to be a low cost carrier with a lot of high unit cost 50-seaters flying around. In a nutshell, that (and the lack of any real structural changes) are why our (East) unit costs have barely budged despite over $3.5 billion in annual concessions from employees, vendors, leasors, etc.
As I said before the merger was announced but after the announced return of mainline aircraft - we can't shrink ourselves to profitability. A corollary would be that you can't offset the shrinking mainline with additionalsmall RJ's and be a low cost carrier. It's no accident that there's no low cost carrier in the country with a large percentage of RJ's, much less small RJ's.
Jim
