Pit Fears Mda Slipping Away

[BoeingBoy]

Airport chief fears airline backing away on MidAtlantic

Thursday, March 18, 2004
By Dan Fitzpatrick, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Airport Authority executive director Kent George said he was surprised by US Airways' decision to put two regional jet simulators in Charlotte, N.C., and fears that the new MidAtlantic Airways regional jet commuter operation that starts April 4 will slip through his hands as well.

Article

Jim

 

[USA320Pilot]

PineyBob:

When US Airways can afford the B757 & B737 simulator down time, the company will close the Simulator Building and the two Flight Crew Training Buildings (Carnot and McCormack). All three of these facilities are excess to the operation and the Company has a new, under utilized training building in Charlotte.

From a business perspective, the move makes sense and creates economies of scale.

Regards,

USA320Pilot

 

[ClueByFour]

One basic business tenet is to reward your "friends" and punish your percieved "enemies". When you look at PIT through that filter it is easy to see why US is not all that enamored with PIT

1. Highest landing cost of the 3 hubs - last numbers I saw were staggering, nearly triple IIRC
2. Failure of ACAA to come up with a relief package.
3. Highest level of union activity. AFA local President has been very vocal and generaly speaking the most militant are located in PIT

CLT officials are more business friendly towards US. So you send "messages" like moving the Flt Sims to the city that you percieve to be more friendly. Which in turn sends a message to your "unfriendly" Hub to get it together.

In turn, your "business unfriendly hub," not interested in throwing good taxpayer money after bad, flips you the bird.

US needs PIT (and it's facilities and it's O&D and their monopolistic hold on the hub and thus fares) than PIT needs US.

Were this not the case, they would have carried thru on the threat to leave on 1/1/04, not restored the London flight, etc.

 

[USA320Pilot]

Clue:

The only reason US Airways is operating Pittsburgh through the summer is the company was not ready to move the assets elsewhere. Even though I live in the Pittsburgh area and I want to see the hub survive, the facilities are excess to the long-range business plan and the hub will likely be closed this fall.

The hub continues to lose money and suffers from poor O&D traffic, which is why America West recently reduced Pittsburgh service.

Moreover, the London flight will not operate past the fall and the hub will likely be eliminated at the same time. Will Pittsburgh be a focus city? Absolutely, but Carnot, McCormack, the Simulator Buidling, RIDC Park West, the Greentree Reservations Facility, and all on-site airport facilites will likely see their leases permanently rejected.

Do I like this? Absolutely not, but it's most likely going to occur, since the ACAA has not provided financial relief.

Regards,

USA320Pilot

 

[delldude]

tool time!!

 

[delldude]

when dave pulls out of pit...do you have any idea what it will cost him in severance pay when almost all mechanics take the money and the layoff USA320PILOT??
and when th emechanics take the money and the layoff...who's going to run the show when they don't seem too interested in replacing people layed off?
or will they invoke the DREADED CLAUSE

 

[flyin2low]

What does R.I.D.C. actually stand for? Hopefully I'll finally know before they close it.

If the hub is reduced to a focus city, will MDA be the predominant carrier or will it be Shuttle America?

Will there still be direct service to LGA for Chip?

These are the three questions of the hour............

 

[Frontier69]

R.I.D.C stands for Regional Industrial Developmemt Corporation.

 

[usfliboi]

Charlotte has and is being very agressive with courting these facilities to move to clt. It has put quite a bit of tax payer money in the airport and into us . Ive been told that indeed the sims are coming to clt as well as all of recurrent training for flt attendants beginning in jan 2005. I do hate to see PIT go , hoever the writing has been on the wall since the wolf took over.

 

[ACrazy8]

Will PIT remain the crew base for MAA? Or will it move to CLT? I thought I heard PSA was opening a crew base in CLT sometime this summer.......

 

[ClueByFour]

Clue:

The only reason US Airways is operating Pittsburgh through the summer is the company was not ready to move the assets elsewhere. Even though I live in the Pittsburgh area and I want to see the hub survive, the facilities are excess to the long-range business plan and the hub will likely be closed this fall.

The hub continues to lose money and suffers from poor O&D traffic, which is why America West recently reduced Pittsburgh service.

Moreover, the London flight will not operate past the fall and the hub will likely be eliminated at the same time. Will Pittsburgh be a focus city? Absolutely, but Carnot, McCormack, the Simulator Buidling, RIDC Park West, the Greentree Reservations Facility, and all on-site airport facilites will likely see their leases permanently rejected.

Do I like this? Absolutely not, but it's most likely going to occur, since the ACAA has not provided financial relief.

Regards,

USA320Pilot

US has nowhere else to move the hub operation to.

PHL cannot handle the excess traffic intra-Northeast (or anywhere else as a connecting hub).

PIT's O&D is greater than CLT. Should CLT close?

America West pulled a flight to PHX because US dumped seats into the PIT-PHX (and for that matter, PIT-(LAX/SFO/LAS/SAN) markets at the America West price point, and because the FF base in PIT still does not "get it," they flew US. It's the same thing that happened to Airtran.

The latter is exactly why US is not going to pull the hub--it's one of two "fortresses" that are defendable (and thus can extract huge yields from). Revenue at PHL is going to drop like a stone in exactly two months.

PIT has high costs. In return, US gets a virtual monopoly on traffic. If it gives this up, there is nowhere to redeploy said assets to keep that same kind of yield. Nor is there anywhere else that even comes close from an operational standpoint to operate the hub.

Even if the state and county lost their minds and actually wanted to bend over take take one for Dave and Dave, why would they? Every indication is that US is not going to be around long enough to retire the debt on PIT anyway, so it is in the best interests of the ACAA, the region, and most importantly the county/state taxpayer to start to plan for life after the US hub.

 

[funguy2]

The only reason US Airways is operating Pittsburgh through the summer is the company was not ready to move the assets elsewhere.

Interesting characterization. I would characterize it differently... Its not that US Airways "is not ready" to move the assets, the problem is that US Airways "has no place to move the assets to".

Think about it. This industry has too much capacity. When this industry has too much capacity, secondary hubs fail. Midway at RDU. Vanguard at MCI. National at LAS. In the early 90's, this happened to AA at SJC, RDU, and BNA.

PIT contains several "sub-problems" for US Airways:

1) US Airways cannot shrink to profitability
2) A new mystery hub in the West would be costly and time consuming to build - money and time are two things US Airways does not have.
3) CLT's O&D probably doesn't justify more aircraft.
4) PHL cannot operationally support a dramatic increase in flights, plus there is an impending yeild errosion which makes expansion problematic (adding more unprofitable flying doesn't help anything).

 

[ITRADE]

Actually, PHL probably could - if depeaked.

 

[BoeingBoy]

ITRADE,

Not to totally disagree with your statement that PHL could handle more flights if depeaked (it could), but PHL needs to be depeaked as much to eliminate to mitigate the operational problems as anything.

I would love to see a good analysis of the costs of operating flights in/out of PHL as opposed to PIT or CLT - extra fuel burn, crew time, etc. Without any statistics to back it up, I would "guesstimate" that the block time "pad" for flights into/out of PHL is double that of flights into/out of either PIT or CLT.

Jim

 

[N628AU]

CLT's O & D traffic would probably be a whole lot better if the fare struture was rationalized. Many drive to GSO, especially those to the north who can get there in less than 90 minutes. ATA has done pretty well in CLT and added another flight over last summer.