US1YFARE said:
Then why do they say USAIRWAYS EXPRESS on the side of the aircraft?
[post="298069"][/post]
Thank you for asking!
Here are the reasons, preceded by a little bit of background. US Airways, as in the actual airline, owns and operate a fleet of E170s. They are staffed by US Airways pilots and flights attendants who were furloughed from the Boeings and Airbuses, albelit at humiliating wages that would make a 14 year captain consider a position as a Starbucks barrista instead.
When the E170 order was announced, US, in it's desire to be as inefficient and bureaucratic as possible, decided that they should have a 12th "Express carrier". So they came up with "MidAtlantic Airways", an Express carrier that like Piedmont PSA and at the time Allegheny would be a wholly-owned subsidiary of US Airways Group. Pesky scope clauses dictated that they had to use *gasp* actual US Airways employees for such a large airlplane. Not to be deterred, they decided they couold do so using Airways employees but have contracts not just in parwith, but worse than the airlines they contract with as Express carriers. MidAtlantic would be it's own entity with it's own operating certificate, a start-up airline that happened to employ furloughed US Airways employees exclusively, in seniority order. Even though it was to be a somewhat seperate entity, the aircraft were to be dual class, first and coach, and wear US Airways titles.
However, this isn't what came to be. There was all sorts of farting around in regards to the operating certificate, which was supposed to use the former Potomac Air certificate. Those who have been following along wil remember that Potomac was part of another harebrained idea regarding the proposed United merger. To satisfy antitrust/monopoly concerns, Potomac was going to spin off with Airways Washington National assets to become "DCAir", the first minority owned airline that would inexplicably prosper as a stand alone airline. Obviously, this never happened as United-US Airways never happened. They figured they could use the certifictate that was just laying around, but apparently the Feds had a different view on this. In the end, to get the planes in the air, they killed the idea of an actual airline and put the planes on the US Airways Inc certificate (as in "mainline", the shrinking entity with the Airbus and Boeing birds). This actually saved them alot of headaches- crews could just go through a quick "new plane" training followed by the normal yearly recurrent, and the company could use thier already established employment records etc etc. All of the headaches of a new airline were abloshished- this was now just a recall as far as those nosey FAA folks and such would have to know.
So the first plane was completed and delivered to Pittsbiurgh in late March of 2004. Despite press releases stating the opposite, the aircraft was now in a single class (although much more comfortable) configuration...The aircraft arrived with US AIRWAYS EXPRESS emblazoned across it, which looks like a forty year old man in diapers, but even more bizarrely, by the door it says "MidAtlantic Airways- Operated by US Airways." If you're still follwing along, we have a US Airways plane, Us Airways employees, operating as afictional, non-public airline operating as US Airways Express. US Airways Express, operated by US Airways.
Confused? That's the point.
If the airctaft says US Airways Express on it, Pete Pilot, Frank Flight Attendant, and Ronnie Ramper won't pay much attention to it, and demand to know why more junior employees are doing the same job for drastically less pay. Who do you work for... oh, MidAtlantic, a commuter, that's not me.
The company also came up with a genius way to screw the folks who work on the ground. If your station has more express flights than mainline, we'll change your classification so we can pay you less. That new airlplane- it's express, see, it says it on the side. Yes, we had mainline planes that size a few years ago... but it's Express for the purposes of whether or not you have a pension, or whether yo make $7 an hour instead of $12.
Lastly, as the company seems to view them, the customers. In this regard, there is no mention of Express whatsoever. Who wants to take an Express flight from Philly to Houston? It's certainly not an Express experience, in fact in many ways it's better than "mainline"... we don't want the customers thinking it's Express... that's just for union-busting psychological warfare on our employees. They rigged the flight numbers, the website and the borading passes to show these flights as regular old US Airways flights. They are not required to inform the passenger a they truly are US Airways flights. If they were Express flights operated by another company, they are required by law to make this information available to consumers.
The E170 flights (at least "MAA") use the US product rather than the Express one. They are catered with the full mainline beverage selections (excluding liquor), sell meals as part of the Inflight Cafe program, and do not "planeside check" bags, which according to usairways.com is part of the US Airways Express product. They utilixe US Airways gates in all of the hubs except PHL (which will now change) as opposed to the Express concourses. The aircraft are ground handled by mainline or "MidAtlantic division" employees, as opposed to Express flkights which are handled by Express workers. The crews, and most ground personnel, do not say Express in announcements and such. The only real product difference is the lack of a FC cabin (which isn't needed). The PSA CRJ700s have 70 seats and use the Express product, the 170s have 72 seats and use the US Airways product. Compare the two.
Now, of couse, the company has decided to sell the planes to an Express carrier. Forget employee loyaly, forget that "MAA" was ironically the most customer-complimented part of the entire airline, we can outsource it and have less employees. Just like reservations... are we really going to lose customers because it's someone in El Salvador making pennies answering the phone? Nah... and if so who cares... more money going to to the top, less to the employees who are bound to annoyingly demand more than 18K a year for thier years of service. Forget that successful airlines like Southwest and JetBlue use thier own employees. Sure, we'll have to pay this contractor a guaranteed profit to operate them, but we can have less employees and pit this contactor against another to see who can do it cheapest. And that's what matters... right? So the Republic airplanes, although they should never have even been allowed to operate (actually, they aren't allowed to, but the company is doing it anyway)... thaey are Express for all intensive purposes... sad but true. The rest of them are not though.
It says "US Airways Express" on the side of the plane and that's where it ends. It's there for sheer union and morale busting reasons and that's it.
I hope my brief reply answers your question as to why they say"US Airways Express"on the side. :down:
that's hysterical
