Fleet Age

ISP

Senior
Apr 3, 2003
321
1
I think something in this industry that is greatly underappreciated is how long carriers are able to fly their A/C for.

Before all the cuts, US had solidified itself as a carrier that flew planes for many years. The DC9/MD80 fleet pushed 25 years, as did the 73S fleet.

Obviously, there was a push to streamline the fleet, but was it necessary to retire planes that were less than 10 years old?

For example, you have the F100. Yes, Fokker was out of business and parts for MX were difficult to come by, but was it cost effective to write off the entire fleet of 40 A/C, especially when they were all only about 10 years old? I'd like to hear commentary on this. I know people will say that Express can now fly the same amount of PAX (90 - on the E190) for cheaper wages, but was this a legit cost savings move?

Now granted, many of the 737 that are currently in the US fleet are at 20 years or older, but how much longer do you think US plans to fly planes at 20+ year intervals?

Boeing is obviously a premier product compared to the Airbus when it comes to quality. The 737 series will be gone completely in 5-7 years (IMO), replaced with EMB products (and possibly Airbus jets if the company gets its act together). Does anyone think that you will see 747UW or 811MA still flying in the year 2025 (and I don't want any pun about the company going under, I'm talking about the planes themselves).

I guess this is just a rant post, but the bottom line is this: wouldn't US be better off if they focused on A/C longetivity?

If NW can fly planes for close to 40 years, wouldn't it be prudent for US to do the same thing? Especially with their financial state? Why did US retire their workhorse DC9? I think the removal of the 73S/DC9-MD80/F100 actually hurt US, with the imparment charges, etc. The cost to operate them wasn't that bad, was it?
 
ISP -

I agree with a lot of what you said. However, the fuel efficiency of the older fleets becomes a factor when the price of fuel skyrockets. That's why the older JT8D-powered aircraft (737-200 and DC-9) needed to be retired.

The F100, on the other hand, is a whole different story. The F100 was very fuel efficient (about 50% of the fuel burn of a 737-200 at altitude) and could probably rival the EMB-190 numbers in that regard. The Fokker company going out of business was a double-edged sword. Parts were only marginally more difficult to come by, since many of the components were manufactured by subcontractors who are still very much in business. A huge advantage to Fokker going under was that the airline operators themselves assumed control of the engineering aspects of the airplane. IOW, if an airline wanted to make any modifications, the Fokker factory had to go along with them. The factory rarely did, since that would be an admission of shortcomings. The one BIG shortcoming the F100 had was the air conditioning system. USAirways had fixes in mind, but where prohibited from doing them because Fokker would not sign off on the modifications. When Fokker left the scene, USAirways got permission from the FAA directly to do the modifications, and the difference in summertime cooling was like night and day. So there is an upside to the factory shutting down.

But the F100 had a huge downside in the eyes of the company. It was flown by mainline pilots under the mainline contract. The EMB-170 (and 190, in the future) will be flown by D-scale MidAtlantic pilots under indentured servitude. That's why the extremely efficient regional jet known as the F100 is gone.
 
I was in stores when we flew the F100, there was not a problem getting parts, and Fokker Airplane Manufacturing stopped producing airplanes, but the maintenance, overhaul and parts manufacturing were still open as they were sold when Fokker Aerospace went bankrupt.
 
There is more to it than "D" scale wages. Especially when you are talking 40 airplanes. The E-170/-190 has other huge advantages.

1.) Further, faster, higher. The ERJ cruises at .78-.80 MACH, 41,000 ft. is a very common cruise altitude, and the range of the aircraft is over 2200 NM. The aircraft's avionix package right down to the flight director is/are based on "energy mgmnt" or in other words not just burning less fuel, but operating efficiently as well.

2.) Comfort. The F-100 was not just hot in the summer, it was noisy and crowded. The seat pitch the the whole of the ERJ is nearly that of business class in most of the rest of the fleet. More overhead per passenger, one flight attendant for every 37 seats, is very quiet, and has no emergency exit rows to worry about.

3.) The ERJ fits under the 76 seat slot restriction in DCA, doesn't take weight hits on summer days at ANY of the airports served. Parts are readily available. The aircraft is RVSM out of the box.

Of coarse mainline resources are being used for MAA or the EMB-170 division. MAA is nothing more than MetroJet as far as the FAA is concerned. The employees are all furloughed or former wholly owned express who have paid their dues to be where they are right now.
 
Older planes require more maintenance. Since the new strategy seems to be to get rid of maintenance and the airlines lease most of the planes anyway why keep old planes?

I know people who lease cars but I dont remembers seeing any one that leased an old car.

NWA flys a lot of long haul flights so the cycles dont add up as fast. So their "old" planes may have less cycles than other airlines "new" planes.

Besides if they keep flying old planes and they actually start making money then the employees will end up getting it!
 
Bob Owens said:
NWA flys a lot of long haul flights so the cycles dont add up as fast.
Their 9s aren't flown on long hauls, and they're retiring the 10s. I'm sure that at least some their 9s have an insane number of cycles (over 75,000), since they date back to the days when I Dream of Jeannie was in first-run.
 
Back in the 90's NWA totally overhauled and upgraded their DC-9 Fleet.
 
Never meant to say you did not, they added a third lavatory, nicer interior, new seats and bigger overheads among other things.
 
Neither AA nor US dumped them at the first opportunity, AA actually bought a better version of the F100 then US and US spent millions per A/C to upgrade the Cooling system on the aircraft.

And US dumped the DC-9, MD-80 and 737-200s at the sametime the F100s were parked in the desert and US was still paying the lease costs on all the airplanes up until 9 months later then they filed bankrupcty for the 1st time and AA is also still paying on the F100s they did not own nor sell.

So with your logic the 737-200s, MD-80s and DC-9s are not a great plane either, yet they are still flying for most other airlines.
 
700UW said:
And US dumped the DC-9, MD-80 and 737-200s at the sametime the F100s were parked in the desert and US was still paying the lease costs on all the airplanes up until 9 months later then they filed bankrupcty for the 1st time and AA is also still paying on the F100s they did not own nor sell.

Given the fact that both AA and US would rather park them and pay the lease expenses on them rather than fly them speaks volumes...

700UW said:
So with your logic the 737-200s, MD-80s and DC-9s are not a great plane either, yet they are still flying for most other airlines.
[post="245850"][/post]​

Where on earth did you come up with that theory? AA still flies lots of MD-80s.
 
The reason they were parked at US was the pulldown of capacity after 9/11, and US parked the 737-200, DC-9 and MD-80 at the sametime as they parked the F100s, your own statement saying US dumped them spoke loads about it.

And if the F100 was such a bad plane why was US spending over a million per plane to upgrade the cooling system up till the time the decision was made to park them?

And KLM, Air France and numerous other airlines around the world still fly the F100.
 
I do very much remember seeing stories post 9/11 about NWA being in much better shape financially because they weren't paying expenses for leases and new aircraft - they had spent the last round of cash on upgrades and overhauls on existing jets.