When was the official start date for Republic?

[US AIRWAYS FAN]

Well we all know that MAA is going to be gone by the end of May which is really sad.

When was the official contract date for (Republic-mod)? I know they have a contact with US for 2 years as far as the slots. When is that date up? I just want to get the 2 years up and over with already.

Talked with a couple of GA's at the express gates at DCA on Thursday morning. They said operations have not been smooth at all working with this express carrier. Sad to see all the E170's go to them.

I am still mad about the DCA IAH and CLE service being axed. :angry: Hopefully we will see those come back when the E190's come on board.

Who could one contact besides Consumer Relations to find out more information about that?

 

[BoeingBoy]

That'd be Republic, and I'm not sure if the two years started with the slot sale or when they started service as US Express - though there wasn't that much time between the two dates, both in Sept05 I think.

Of course, getting the slots back won't alter their Express affiliate status - that contract is for 10 years.

Jim

ps - if you haven't already, check for a PM.

 

[US AIRWAYS FAN]

Sorry meant Republic....was up too late last night..head was cloudy :blink:

 

[BoeingBoy]

Hey, Republic - Wisconsin - Wexford - Eastshore.....

They all get lost in the great Express mish-mash after awhile.

Jim

 

[US AIRWAYS FAN]

Yes it does get confusing. I wish the company could bring all the express flying under one roof.

 

[FlyOnWall]

Looks like Republic has caused some kind of meltdown in DCA this morning, again no crews, while the MDA people are getting laid off.

Meltdown at DCA

Notice that even on an aviation website, no one knows it's Republic, assumes it's US Airways. :down: They mention a new hire flight attendant striaght out of training not showing up.

US Airways has 1250 flight attendants laid off, 300 or so who happily flew the E70s and showed up on time. But they give the planes to Republic who can't even get anyone to work there or show up for work. Something needs to be done about this. It's ridiculous.

 

[MarkMyWords]

Let's see if we can put this in to some prospective and stop making this the "FlyOnWall" hate republic non-sense.

First and foremost.....only one flight canceled out of DCA and yes that was due to crew (or lack there of). One other flight was delayed 52 minutes due to crew. That is it. There was no huge drama in DCA due to some sort of Republic Meltdown. This type of problem of "no-show" crew members is not limited to Republic, but happens at all of the carriers. Just yesterday I was in LGA and we were missing a F/A because she didn't realize that she had a trip. Fortunately, they had TDY F/A's at a hotel near by and were able to replace her with minimal delay. The other day, a Pilot forgot he had a trip and when contacted, he was not in base and a reserve crew member had to be called to take the flight. Since the reserve wouldn't make scheduled departure, crew scheduling moved crews around delaying a couple flights 20-30 minutes to accomodate the no-show. It happens. Be it Republic, MidAtlantic, Mainline or PSA.

Second. The "chaos" that ensued was not the fault of Republic directly. It was the MAINLINE ticket counter personnel that were not organized and prepared for irregulariites and communicating with our customers. Total service failure on our part.

Fly - with all due respect, your obsession with Republic is not healthy. I do understand your frustration and the pride you had in MAA. The deal is done and no amount of whining and whaling is going to change what has happened. These problems are not limited to Republic as you would want everyone to believe.

 

[FlyOnWall]

Markmywords, you don't understand bull since you clearly assume I work for or did work for MAA, which is not the case. Yes, my household has been affected by the MAa layoffs. This is the third time you've confused me with other posters, and frankly, you obsession with ME is unhealthy. You also feel a need to respond to every MAA/Republic thread, always deriding MAA employees and defending Republic's cancellations, slide deployments, and poor customer service. So you obviously have your agenda too... get over it. Go back to boring us with your essays about rolling hubs.

If I was contracting a company or individual to do something and they repeatedly don't show up or hold up thier end of the deal, I'd get rid of them. I think it's laughable that a lower cost in house operation has been replaced with a higher cost, appalling quality one and like others I'll continue to express that opinion when I want to. As you can see, customers are being lost over it. Plus the difference with your flights was that they had coverage and were able to perform the flight. Republic has shown again and again that they do not have the staff for the flights, among the plethora of other issues they have.

Reading on the behavior of the US agents in DCA and the lack of agents to accomodate people is also inexcusable. Maybe the moral of the story here is that they need more staffing, and need to get rid of the bad apples. As for the contract work, bring back the people who care about the company and at least go to work.

Like Rico said, Republic will continue to be called out unless they are perfect. They replaced US Airways jobs and insisted the US workers were not good enough and they could do it themselves. Looks like they cant. But spin all you want... click on the link and go tell all of those US customers, or the customer who started this thread "it's not a meltdown" and "it happens all the time"... those are thier impressions and this is clearly a controllable loss of customers. But spin as you will!

 

[MarkMyWords]

So, you are trying to tell me that in all the time MAA was flying, we never suffered a crew cancellation? We've never had a mainline crew cancellation because someone didnt' show up? PLEASE! It happens. We deal with it the best we can. We have had similar situations happen at every carrier, including mainline and MAA. Soetimes we are fortunate enough to have coverage, sometimes we are not.

I do not feel the need to respond to every MAA/Republic thread, but I do feel compelled to responed to someone that blatantly comes on here and distorts the truth. You obviously live in this fantasy world where everything at MAA was all peaches and cream and nothing ever went wrong there. There was NEVER a crew cancellation caused by a crew member not showing up. There was NEVER an incident of a slide being blown on a MAA aircraft.

I will defend anyone that you feel compelled to knock down as being "the worst employees" when they make the exact same mistakes that each and every carrier - including mainline and MAA - have made. I don't trivialize what happened as "it happens". I recognize the service failures that we have made and hope that we learn from our mistakes. What you need to recognize is that MAA was not as saintly as you seem to have heard from your "source".

 

[FlyOnWall]

No one said anything about saintly, but you can't argue that the mainline operation was a million times better than Republic's operation. Well, actually you can argue, and do, but it falls flat and the customers are still continually dissatisfied. But glad you like your job enough to try. Spin spin away!

Now why don't you reply directly to the affected customers like US Airways Fan. Just make sure you don't confuse them with other posters, as again, you've done several times now with me.

 

[MarkMyWords]

I am not the one spinning.....I am telling it like it is. You are the one with this MAA-can-do-nothing-wrong, Republic-is-the-worst attitude. You make this whole thing into a we vs they cat fight. Republic is no better or worse the Chatauqua, MESA or even Piedmont/PSA. There will always be room for improvement as is evident by how the mainline employees handled the reaccomodating of customers off of a canceled flight.

Our efforts should be focused on doing what is right for our customers and not pointing fingers. Remember that when you point a finger at someone, there are three fingers pointing right back at you. (figuratively of course, since you are not associated with MAA)

 

[FlyOnWall]

Actually, Chautauqua seems to run a pretty solid operation, it's surprising that Republic is of the same spawn. Even Mesa's CLT operation seems to be an improvement over thier PHL operations with the 50 seaters.

And as far as "MAA" goes, how is Republic so short of E70 crews when they insisted upon not taking the mainline E70 crews that are now gone due to the aircraft sale? They were so arrogant to tell the mainline crews they would not be keeping thier jobs, so they have NO EXCUSE to be short an F/A or pilot. Period. End of story.

And you can keep your finger/s right where they are. Get over it.

 

[SegmentKing]

I can vouch that MAA is/was a better operation that Republic.

I was a supervisor in Key West.

We picked up MDA on 9 November to much fanfare at the airport, being the ONLY airline that can take every passenger AND their bags. We were thrilled. Our passengers even noticed the difference in professionalism between our friends at PSA and MAA, and this from their mouths not mine.

In the 4 or so months we had MDA, we only had a few days of cancellations, and they were about once a month, if even that.

A few weeks before I left Key West, we had an entire weekend of cancelled and delayed flights, mix of maintenance and other issues. Again, MAA and PSA never had these problems - back to back - like Republic did/had/has. DCA maintenance was told to look over the DCA-MCO plane with a fine comb to make sure it can operate all day. Republic, on the other hand, gives the route whatever plane it can. And it constantly would be delayed or break down.

In this one weekend, of the 9 flights we were supposed to run, only 6 operated, and only ONE was on time. The rest had anywhere from a 30 min delay (due to us and FLL turning that sucker in 20 mins) or 2 hours.

PSA came to the rescue and even sent us a CRJ on Saturday and again on Monday to clean up the mess, including the inaugural EYW-CLT nonstop at 1230AM that Sunday, with 28 passengers on board! (restriction was 32/40). One day on a cancellation, we didn't even have TAXIS to get people off of our Island. No hotels either, and no other seats on Other airlines. It was so bad I had an employee just walk off the job.

Again, I've never had that with MidATlantic.

Another instance, the plane had a slide issue in EYW (wasn't blown, but close). Our air bottle isn't working (that thing has been up and down since we got it) and they had a spare plane and crew in DCA but the APU wasn't working. We asked them to NOT send it and cancel everything (this was at 4pm). The manager even asked them to cancel it. Well, somehow they said they would send the plane down, keep the #2 engine running on the ramp, and a mechanic will try to get the APU to start. right.

Well, plane came in from DCA, got in at 7pmish, and we got the mechanic on board. After 25 mins of the engine running, find out we can't get the APU to start. Passengers in gate area watching all this, btw. I then discuss a single engine turn, as its in the Mainline RON (tried not to say "well, MDA can do it")... captain was NOT comfortable with it, including boarding the pax with #2 running, shut door, start #1, shut down 2 so we can load bags, and send it off. I got so despirate for our customers that I begged the captain to please let us throw the passengers on board, they can deal with bags later.

15 minutes after this conversation, the planes door closed and taxied off. I had 2 chairmans, 4 golds, and 3 silvers in the gate area watching their plane take off. Lets not forget I had 30 other passengers.

Republic also told us they were going to cancel a flight one day due to maintenance, so I instructed my agents to dump everyone. The flt was on a maintenance delay out of FLL on the last flight, and a 1/2 an hour delay means NO ONE makes the 7pm FLL connections. I then got a call from Repub dispatch asking me why i'm getting rid of everyone, told them what they told me, and now they are running the flight to Key West (only 2hours late), even though no one will make their connections and our policy states we are NOT to send people on a misconnection and put up in a hotel. I had no choice. We had to then REBOOK all 76 passengers (well, 72, some no showed) and put them at the Palm Beach Marriott for $300 a night. What makes me even more upset is that Republic didn't cancel 3349 -- the 420pm flight -- they ran it, with NO ONE on board as FLL dumped everyone on Continental. So republic got their profit & completion on this one.... and only screwed a couple hundred of OUR customers, not their customers.

So please, do not let facts get in anyone's way here. MDA was NEVER this bad... MDA worked with us and got us a plane or helped us find one. Republic will tell us "oh, we won't pay for PSA to send a plane down" which is basicly telling my employees and my customers we are [deleted]. (PSA is the only other jet operator that can operate into EYW, Air Wisky doesn't have it in their plates or op specs). CHQ did finally send down a trainer to train us all on the ERJs, only to find out when we were cancelled that CHQ does have a spare ERJ in FLL, but its in DL colors and we can't have it. This time only 64 passengers got screwed.

On my second to last day of work, we had an IOE. Oh dear god. This guy could barely speak english. The guy even opened the door before we got the air stairs pulled up. I heard his Check FA going over everything with him... what is scary is that this would have been the 4th leg of his IOE. My friends who are Checks for other airlines are told not to say ANYTHING at all. This lady was going over the manuals with him, announcements, etc. I've been told that Republic has been rushing everyone thru training that they've gone as far as to fudge tests just to get the crews online.

to this day, I have more and more respect for the wholly owned carriers as they have a clue about how its done -- its our money, its our employees, its OUR product. I don't get that from republic.

 

[xoxo]

All I have to say is...WOW!!!!!!!! :blink: REPUBLIC STINKS!!!

 

[MarkMyWords]

I've never said that Republic didn't have issues, but if you listen to people like Fly, you would think that MDA never had any issues at all. That is incorrect. When MDA was first starting out, there were plenty of growing pains. Maybe talking to someone is SYR, MCI or IAH would give you a similar picture to what SegmentKing experienced in EYW. Remember, by the time the E170's made it to EYW, MDA had been operating them for well over 18 months.

Were you aware that in the first year of operation, there were 10 slide deployments on MDA? Listening to Fly and some of the others, they would have you believe that slide deployments NEVER happened when the airplanes flew for MDA. It just isn't true. So they take something that has happened at Republic and turn it into this huge event, when similar events happened when MDA flew the airplanes.

I am not saying that MDA didn't run a better operation then Republic. But I am also not turning a blind eye to the similar things that have happened when MDA had the airplanes.