Is US Airways Due for a Major Route Restructuring?

[FM2436]

U.S. airlines carried 72 million passengers in july which set a new 1 month record with Southwest, for the first time ever, flying more airline passengers (9.7 million) than any other U.S. domestic airline. American flew 9.1 million, Delta flew 7 million, United flew 6.3 million and Northwest flew 4.9 million passengers. US Airways wasn't in the top five.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/071015/airlines_traffic.html?.v=1

Is US Airways due for a major route restructuring? Southwest flies to only 63 cities in 32 states and boarded 9.7 million passengers in the month of July. US Airways and US Airways Express flies to (my count) 177 cities and boarded less than Northwest's 4.9 million passengers.

I said this in a previous post that I have always wondered, in close market pairings like Ithaca, Elmira, and Binghamton NY, or Huntington, Charleston, Lewisburg, Beckley, and Bluefield WV, or even Lynchburg and Roanoke VA, why US Airways doesn't reduce it's presence and serve that/those regions though one airport like Binghamton NY, Charleston WV, and Roanoke VA. Does US Airways really need to be flying from 14 airports in Pennsylvania, or 8 airports in West Virginia, or 9 airports in Virginia??? While I am a firm believer in the US Airways Express system is it absolutely necessary that US Airways Express provide scheduled (connection) airline service into what appears to be ever small city that has an airport? Does US Airways need to elimiate airline service into 30 to as many as 50 existing cities?

To conclude this thought, is it absolutely necessary that US Airways has 9 regional airlines flying under the US Airways Express flag. Shouldn't PSA and Piedmont make up the entire US Airways Express network?

 

[N924PS]

The question of 9 Regionals flying the USAirways flag was addressed by Mr. Parker at one of the early employee Q&A sessions.

Basically, USAirways is stuck with Mesa and beholden to Air Wisconsin for some time to come. I believe he mentioned the contract with Mesa was good until 2011 or so.

They tried to keep the E170's in house, because they could have been flown cheaper on Mainline than at Republic, but the sale of the 170's was not on Parker's watch and the transaction was done.

It's hard to believe most of the cities you mentioned were at one time the "bread and butter" of USAir. And that's when the regional airplanes were Convair 580's and DC-9's. I think it all made sense when PIT was the hub, but now that has gone the way of the dinosaur, so perhaps your assessment is valid.

 

[CynicalResAgent]

Some of the cities like Beckley, Altoona, Morgantown,Bradford, Dubois, Parkersburg, Bluefield and I believe Staunton are EAS cities and are serviced as part of a goverment contract. EAS is Essential Air Service and is a goverment program to guarantee a minimum level of service at airports that otherwise might not be able to attract service on their own.

 

[JMM]

US needs to make radical changes including the retirement of its reservation systems, complete fleet overhaul, complete inflight offering overhaul, route structure overhaul, etc. Is the current management team the ones to do it, HELL NO. Without the above mentioned changes, US will be swimming in red ink during the next recession. But, what do I know, I am just a lowly flight attendant.

 

[traderjake]

Complete fleet overhaul? You might want to rethink that one.

 

[Pacemaker]

Been through this before..

 

[Be Careful What You Wish For.]

Does anyone know who taught WN to be WN?

Great photos. Less smog in the PSA photo.

 

[BoeingBoy]

U.S. airlines carried 72 million passengers in july which set a new 1 month record with Southwest, for the first time ever, flying more airline passengers (9.7 million) than any other U.S. domestic airline. American flew 9.1 million, Delta flew 7 million, United flew 6.3 million and Northwest flew 4.9 million passengers. US Airways wasn't in the top five.

Just a few notes.....

- WN has enplaned more system passengers than any other U.S. carrier nearly every month for over a year now.

- The BTS figures are for each certificated carrier. This means that those carriers with express ops don't have the express enplanements counted in their totals - AA enplanements don't include Eagle or Connection enplanements.

- Likewise, US East and West are still being reported as separate carriers since they had separate certificates for the months being reported. So the US figure doesn't include either West or Express enplanements.

Jim

 

[JS]

...

I said this in a previous post that I have always wondered, in close market pairings like Ithaca, Elmira, and Binghamton NY, or Huntington, Charleston, Lewisburg, Beckley, and Bluefield WV, or even Lynchburg and Roanoke VA, why US Airways doesn't reduce it's presence and serve that/those regions though one airport like Binghamton NY, Charleston WV, and Roanoke VA. Does US Airways really need to be flying from 14 airports in Pennsylvania, or 8 airports in West Virginia, or 9 airports in Virginia??? While I am a firm believer in the US Airways Express system is it absolutely necessary that US Airways Express provide scheduled (connection) airline service into what appears to be ever small city that has an airport? Does US Airways need to elimiate airline service into 30 to as many as 50 existing cities?

...

ITH, ELM, BGM, HTS, CRW, LWB (seasonally), LYH and ROA have other carriers besides US. If US decides that people from Lynchburg should drive to Roanoke, 99% of them will simply fly Delta, and Delta will thank US for handing them the LYH market. Same goes for ITH/ELM, and so on.

LWB (serviced by Delta only in the summer) is not near anything, and CRW is the capital of West Virginia, so I don't know why you included them on your chopping block.

As mentioned above, the monopoly airports are EAS, so ending service there means giving away free money back to the govt and the people will drive to another airport such as PIT and most likely fly someone else.

Fares out of these small airports are high; they almost never have a sale unless the people in Delta revenue management are bored and put LYH-Florida on sale for the low-low price of $199.

The duopoly airports are cash cows (a duopoly airport means serviced by just two carriers). Dropping service and expecting people to drive to another airport just to fly US is utterly insane.

Allegiant Airlines flies to nothing but small airports out of two hubs, LAS and MCO. Most airports have only one flight a day, but it's on an MD-80 and the tickets are cheap.

 

[X-U]

Also, LWB is close to the Greenbriar resort in White Sulphur Springs. Many DC big wigs hob-nob there. http://www.greenbrier.com/site/

 

[SegmentKing]

don't forget NW and WN fly big jets into places that Airways will throw maybe 1 mainline plane and 6 or 7 RJs.

 

[OldGuyinPA]

Read my line...below

WN became WN..via PSA

Pacific Southwest Airlines...

Just white out "Pacific"

 

[boeingdriver213]

At least he learned.....

 

[fr8tmastr]

The question of 9 Regionals flying the USAirways flag was addressed by Mr. Parker at one of the early employee Q&A sessions.


They tried to keep the E170's in house, because they could have been flown cheaper on Mainline than at Republic, but the sale of the 170's was not on Parker's watch and the transaction was done.

That is not actually correct. Doug, was in charge prior to any money changing hands for the 170's, and while in BK protection could have easily gotten out of that deal. The money from the transaction turned out to be very close to the number that the outgoing braintrust stole from Airways. (I am sure that is just coincedence) Then, not to long after Doug proclaimed to not like outsourcing etc. He outsourced more flying in the form of the 175's. Doug lacks in the credibility department.

 

[EMBFA]

That is not actually correct. Doug, was in charge prior to any money changing hands for the 170's, and while in BK protection could have easily gotten out of that deal. The money from the transaction turned out to be very close to the number that the outgoing braintrust stole from Airways. (I am sure that is just coincedence) Then, not to long after Doug proclaimed to not like outsourcing etc. He outsourced more flying in the form of the 175's. Doug lacks in the credibility department.

Thank you! After covering the CCY retention bonuses (I believe it was for 35 people or so), the company made something ridiculous like one million dollars from the sale of 28 aircraft and our slots at LaGuardia and National.

Doug came and spoke to us on his little tour, big old sob story of how if he had his way the 170s would be on the mainline with no division (like they always should have been). As pointed out above, the actual transaction was not completed while in bankrupcy- it was completed after, when Doug was in charge. Then just a few months into his reign, he announced that they were giving RP thirty more planes- these even larger 175s, which is our E190 minus three rows. The excuse that time was that they had to get out of 50 seat flying so badly that they absolutely needed to phase out Chautauqua's big bad fleet of about 20 ERJ145s and the only way to do so was to allow them to fly up to 30 175s... huh?

If they needed out of 50 seaters so badly, how come they haven't terminated Trans States at-risk contract for 14 ERJ145s? Or puled thier very own PSA CRJ200s in favor of 700s? Or renegotiated with Air Wisconsin in regards to thier 70 CRJs? Furthermore, Chautauqua was so desperate to get thier Continental Express flying going, they ended up having to add a whole other fleet type to get it up and running. They needed those 145s anyway.

He proved himself to be a liar, he is just as into outsourcing as the others were, despite admitting that it was always cheaper to operate them in-house. There was an interview with Scott Kirby where he was bragging about how many a/c and how large were allowed to be flown by Express carriers- he came off as though he had won the lottery. The real blame lies with the unions though, US ALPA for being wussies and US AFA for being too dumb to even have thier own scope clause. What kind of union for a mainly short haul, small narrowbody airline allows outside contractors to fly up to 93 small narrowbodies with near transcon range- in fact the same type as the smallest aircraft in the fleet? Duh, only at this place... I was on OPR the other day and wanted a bottle of water, so was going to run on a plane and get one. There was ONE mainline aircraft in all of B and C, and it was boarding... the rest of the gates were full of Republic planes.

If the pilots do get an independent union, they need to include the wholly-owned pilots in it and settle for nothing less than brand scope. All flying done on property would result in growth and movement, strength in numbers and bargaining power. Turboprop and RJ up to 69 seats at W/Os (maybe exception for Q400), E170 and up at mainline, with flow up/flow down. Stupid AFA that can't think for themselves would benefit hugely from this as well.