Japan Flights

[eolesen]

the reason no one at AA heard of "hot spare" in using E's terminology "No MEL's".....find me a 777 that's MEL free! Nata! mechanic @ ord for 20 years. Matter of fact...find me any widebody that's MEL free? Nata! keep it simple, AA will not fly a spare to NRT....no spare 777 in system....either flying or OTS.

FWIW, when we were still flying CRAF/AMC charters during 2003/2004, the logbooks for the aircraft dedicated to that operation were kept more or less spotless, mainly because of where they were heading. IIRC, AA also had mechanics and a flyaway kit onboard all those flights... This isn't too different of a situation.

It's pretty easy to create a spare -- cancel one of the two DFW flights... If sick calls are indeed spiking, and passenger demand is falling off, it might be a wise move regardless of whether or not a spare gets positioned for evacuations.

 

[strikeforce]

FWIW, when we were still flying CRAF/AMC charters during 2003/2004, the logbooks for the aircraft dedicated to that operation were kept more or less spotless, mainly because of where they were heading. IIRC, AA also had mechanics and a flyaway kit onboard all those flights... This isn't too different of a situation.

It's pretty easy to create a spare -- cancel one of the two DFW flights... If sick calls are indeed spiking, and passenger demand is falling off, it might be a wise move regardless of whether or not a spare gets positioned for evacuations.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't imagine AA cancelling a DFW flight to create a spare and then waste 200,000lbs of fuel to have a widebody just sit around. They do it to cover for an OTS aircraft overseas, maybe. I can most likely see AA just cancel NRT trips because of demand and route the 777's on other legs (south america) or (europe).

 

[Mach85ER]

fltguymk,

It's not the first time the terms and practices invented with Flight Service conflict with those used by the Flight Dept, Maintenance and Operations Management.

 

[FWAAA]

Here's an article summarizing the airlines no longer overnighting crews at NRT:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-17/lufthansa-ceo-shocked-by-japan-nuclear-emergency-as-ba-crews-leave-tokyo.html?cmpid=yhoo

Some using HKG, others using ICN and some using KIX and NGO.

 

[FWAAA]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't imagine AA cancelling a DFW flight to create a spare and then waste 200,000lbs of fuel to have a widebody just sit around. They do it to cover for an OTS aircraft overseas, maybe. I can most likely see AA just cancel NRT trips because of demand and route the 777's on other legs (south america) or (europe).

I could be wrong, but I though eolesen was talking about cancelling one NRT-DFW flight, creating an instant spare at NRT, not wasting fuel flying an empty 777 from DFW to NRT. Of course, as demand to Japan crashes, more and more flights to NRT will be pretty empty. I agree that AA (and others) are probably going to cancel more frequencies to/from Japan.

 

[FWAAA]

I think the most interesting challenge that is going to be faced by a US carrier is UALs situation. They use NRT as a connecting hub. How and where do you pick that up and transfer it to in order to keep the connecting traffic flowing. Notwithstanding the distances what airport has half a dozen gates sitting around ready for use - notwithstanding ground servicing needs.

Isn't Delta's NRT hub operation even larger than UAL's?

 

[eolesen]

Isn't Delta's NRT hub operation even larger than UAL's?

Yep. Don't you remember WT crowing about this a couple weeks back on the 737 replacement thread?...

Chicago Trib ran an article about US-Japan market share yesterday.

 

[Skymess]

Don't you hate it when the only other people who've commented on the term "hot spare" versus "extra" had the same "AA Vocab" as me? 😉

Maybe you should stick to heating up someone else's nuts...

Flight Attendant here. I've been based in NY, Dallas, Chicago, LA, and Miami. I've NEVER heard hot spare. We call it an extra. It's not like I only talk to flight attendants either. I'm friends with pilots and maintenance guys from all over. I guess it somehow never came up.

 

[Kev3188]

Not for nothing, but at NW, er, DL, I've never known them as anything *but* a hot spare. Extra sections were something totally different...

 

[damajagua]

Spare, extra who cares

 

[WorldTraveler]

Yep. Don't you remember WT crowing about this a couple weeks back on the 737 replacement thread?...

Chicago Trib ran an article about US-Japan market share yesterday.

Being aware of the industry and its players is a function of truth - and truth cuts in all directions.

 

[damajagua]

Being aware of the industry and its players is a function of truth - and truth cuts in all directions.

United and American are not that far behind when you
add the joint ventures

 

[boston]

Flight Attendant here. I've been based in NY, Dallas, Chicago, LA, and Miami. I've NEVER heard hot spare. We call it an extra. It's not like I only talk to flight attendants either. I'm friends with pilots and maintenance guys from all over. I guess it somehow never came up.

I'm a Flight Attendant and I've only heard of a "spare" and the bid sheet used to refer to it as just that on the heading pages of all our aircraft, but they no longer list the count of each fleet and spare a/c.

 

[FrugalFlyerv2.0]

Here is something to consider, then you decide whether changing crews (in HKG or ICN) is knee jerk over-reaction or rational thinking:

*Chernobyl disaster released 400 times as much radiation as the Hiroshima bomb
*Nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s and '60s released 100 to one thousand times as much radiation as Chernobyl

Now how much radiation could the damaged reactors in Fukushima have released so far? There doesn't even appear to have been a reactor core meltdown - thank God.

*source: some academic on a morning radio show program interview was producing these numbers

 

[WorldTraveler]

United and American are not that far behind when you
add the joint ventures

They add up all of their revenue and then divide it right back... how about that.... AA, UA, JL, and NH walk away w/ the proportion of what it contributed. DL walks away w/ 100% of what it generated. that's the way joint ventures work.

so, tell me again which US airlines are changing crews and whether there is indeed a legitimate threat of a meltdown.....