1- Yes, over 60 aircraft in the last year alone (about1/2 of the fleet since 9/11).
We operate more express seats than mainline on our system. Yes, that is a concern by labor but not by management- management makes those decisions not labor.
The CR9's may be parked on the C-Con because the E-Con is not designed to handle that size of aircraft considering the amount of traffic over on E. E-Con is already crowded with double parked 50 and 70 seat RJ's and Dash 100's and 300's with others waiting for a parking place sometimes. It may be an issue of safety. Also the passenger waiting areas in E-Con are not designed for the number of passengers this aircraft will hold, especially if you have two or three of the CR9's scheduled to board around the same time.
Good answer but I'd like to add, as it is now, our passengers in the E concourse are sent outside (on most gates) to a panorama of airplanes, Dashes, CRJ's, etc with no idea which airplane to go to. Our ground staff outside can only be so many places at one time. Safety is a huge concern. With the multiple planes parking on one gate situation it is only a matter of time before a passenger gets hurt due to ramp vehicles, tow bars, propellers or any number of dangers on the ramp.... 🙁
Yes it is a concern, but unfortunately mainline costs were not low enough to allow this to happen.
So we replace mainline jets with higher unit cost RJ's - that solve's the cost problem how???
I guess it's that executive lingo - when they talk about lowering costs they really mean labor costs. Apparently total costs don't matter......
This makes sense only on those routes/times where there is a limited demand. Flights will always be full, but it is good to limit the number of seats that have to be sold at or below the average cost.
