New maintenance delays shades of past ?

Old Jul 29, 2014, 4:34 pm
  #1  
Original Poster
 
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Mountain Time Zone
Programs: AS Million Miler/Marriott Lifetime Titanium/ IGH Ambassador
Posts: 5,987
New maintenance delays shades of past ?

For those long time AS flyers about 7 summers ago when AS began another expansion there was a rash of mechanical delays that lasted for several weeks. Now as I sit here yet again another delay. Am I thinking the expansion and street fight with DL is now affecting operations?
edgewood49 is offline  
Old Jul 29, 2014, 5:07 pm
  #2  
 
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: LON
Programs: AS MVPG, Marriott Titanium, UA Silver
Posts: 1,350
Originally Posted by edgewood49
For those long time AS flyers about 7 summers ago when AS began another expansion there was a rash of mechanical delays that lasted for several weeks. Now as I sit here yet again another delay. Am I thinking the expansion and street fight with DL is now affecting operations?
I've had several delays the last month due to log book issues. Not maintenance itself, but the record keeping on the aircraft

Could just be unlucky, tho.
MonThruThurs is offline  
Old Jul 29, 2014, 5:21 pm
  #3  
A FlyerTalk Posting Legend, Moderator, Information Desk, Ambassador, Alaska Airlines
Hilton Contributor BadgeIHG Contributor Badge
 
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: FAI
Programs: AS MVP Gold100K, AS 1MM, Maika`i Card, AGR, HH Gold, Hertz PC, Marriott Titanium LTG, CO, 7H, BA, 8E
Posts: 42,953
Wirelessly posted (beckoa's BB: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.694 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

What type of aircraft?
beckoa is offline  
Old Jul 29, 2014, 5:23 pm
  #4  
 
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: LON
Programs: AS MVPG, Marriott Titanium, UA Silver
Posts: 1,350
Originally Posted by beckoa
Wirelessly posted (beckoa's BB: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.694 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

What type of aircraft?
1 738, 1 737

737 makes sense as it was N607AS (PDX Timbers plane), the oldest 737 in the fleet.
MonThruThurs is offline  
Old Jul 29, 2014, 5:50 pm
  #5  
 
Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 5,953
Originally Posted by MonThruThurs
1 738, 1 737

737 makes sense as it was N607AS (PDX Timbers plane), the oldest 737 in the fleet.
The Timbers plane isn't the oldest plane in the fleet... by far. Any of the 737-400's are older.
AS Flyer is offline  
Old Jul 29, 2014, 5:58 pm
  #6  
 
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: LON
Programs: AS MVPG, Marriott Titanium, UA Silver
Posts: 1,350
Originally Posted by AS Flyer
The Timbers plane isn't the oldest plane in the fleet... by far. Any of the 737-400's are older.
meant 73H & 73W, respectively. And the Timbers plane is the oldest 737-790 in the fleet...

http://www.airlinecodes.co.uk/arctypes.asp#7
MonThruThurs is offline  
Old Jul 29, 2014, 7:08 pm
  #7  
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 222
New maintenance delays shades of past ?

Just bad maintenance days, they happen every once in awhile. Given the tight flying the airplanes are on during the summer, a few mechanicals can have a big downline effect. Sometime mechanicals are not quick fixes either.
Bay Area Blue is offline  
Old Jul 29, 2014, 7:31 pm
  #8  
Original Poster
 
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Mountain Time Zone
Programs: AS Million Miler/Marriott Lifetime Titanium/ IGH Ambassador
Posts: 5,987
Originally Posted by Bay Area Blue
Just bad maintenance days, they happen every once in awhile. Given the tight flying the airplanes are on during the summer, a few mechanicals can have a big downline effect. Sometime mechanicals are not quick fixes either.
and I agree I and just a little "gun shy" when it comes to mid summer delays like this been there done that to their credit rolled out a bird got us on it apologized profusely ( maybe the DL thing has something to do with this ?) and we are in the air as I post.

It is interesting to watch the "inter play" with DL and AS it has made AS step up their game and thats a good thing.
edgewood49 is offline  
Old Jul 29, 2014, 11:25 pm
  #9  
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: SFO, mostly
Posts: 2,203
You suggest that AS is spreading itself too thin trying to compete with Delta, but I just don't see any evidence of that. If you look at the June traffic press release, ASMs (available seat miles) on mainline AS aircraft were only up 5.5% compared to June 2013. That's a paltry increase, especially considering it is largely attributable to an increase in seating capacity due to the cabin retrofit project and new deliveries of 737-900ERs. The 2nd Quarter figures show the operating fleet as of June 30 had increased by 6 a/c with only a 2.2% increase in stage length compared to the same period last year. Aircraft utilization was actually down 3.7% (10.5 hours/day compared to 10.9 during the same period last year). One thing I don't know is how many aircraft are out-of-service at a given time for the cabin retrofits, but I'd expect they would try to minimize this over the summer. Number of aircraft undergoing heavy checks can also vary from year-to-year, but all-in-all, I can't see why things should be much different from last summer.

On-time performance for the first 6 months of 2014 was 87.8%, basically identical to 87.7% in 2013. Apart from the past couple days, I think things have been tracking last summer pretty closely. Seattle might be a bit more congested due to the increase in DL ops, but its not clear that this is impacting operations.

Last edited by sltlyamusd; Jul 30, 2014 at 1:02 am
sltlyamusd is offline  
Old Jul 30, 2014, 10:46 am
  #10  
Original Poster
 
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Mountain Time Zone
Programs: AS Million Miler/Marriott Lifetime Titanium/ IGH Ambassador
Posts: 5,987
Originally Posted by sltlyamusd
You suggest that AS is spreading itself too thin trying to compete with Delta, but I just don't see any evidence of that. If you look at the June traffic press release, ASMs (available seat miles) on mainline AS aircraft were only up 5.5% compared to June 2013. That's a paltry increase, especially considering it is largely attributable to an increase in seating capacity due to the cabin retrofit project and new deliveries of 737-900ERs. The 2nd Quarter figures show the operating fleet as of June 30 had increased by 6 a/c with only a 2.2% increase in stage length compared to the same period last year. Aircraft utilization was actually down 3.7% (10.5 hours/day compared to 10.9 during the same period last year). One thing I don't know is how many aircraft are out-of-service at a given time for the cabin retrofits, but I'd expect they would try to minimize this over the summer. Number of aircraft undergoing heavy checks can also vary from year-to-year, but all-in-all, I can't see why things should be much different from last summer.

On-time performance for the first 6 months of 2014 was 87.8%, basically identical to 87.7% in 2013. Apart from the past couple days, I think things have been tracking last summer pretty closely. Seattle might be a bit more congested due to the increase in DL ops, but its not clear that this is impacting operations.

I did not suggest that AS WAS spreading itself too thin only that and maybe it's "me" getting the delays this summer. And having been in the AF flying I am fully aware of operations and there is from time to time "oh .... moments" !!!!!

my post was just a "pondering" moment. All airlines especially in summer months have a huge task of keeping these birds in the air and it does not take but a small hiccup on an early am flight to throw the entire day off.

AND as you posted "apart from the past couple of days" to which I have been on three flights and the fourth this afternoon!!!
edgewood49 is offline  
Old Jul 30, 2014, 2:09 pm
  #11  
FlyerTalk Evangelist
 
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Northern Calif./Eastern Ida.
Programs: Amethyst Premier Plutonium Medallion
Posts: 20,619
Originally Posted by edgewood49
For those long time AS flyers about 7 summers ago when AS began another expansion there was a rash of mechanical delays that lasted for several weeks. Now as I sit here yet again another delay. Am I thinking the expansion and street fight with DL is now affecting operations?
weren't you among those who was considering moving to UA?

if you think AS has bad operations, i invite you to spend a few consecutive weeks flying UA instead. that ought to bring you back down to earth and make you grateful for AS ontime percentage.
PV_Premier is offline  
Old Jul 30, 2014, 3:02 pm
  #12  
Original Poster
 
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Mountain Time Zone
Programs: AS Million Miler/Marriott Lifetime Titanium/ IGH Ambassador
Posts: 5,987
Originally Posted by PV_Premier
weren't you among those who was considering moving to UA?

if you think AS has bad operations, i invite you to spend a few consecutive weeks flying UA instead. that ought to bring you back down to earth and make you grateful for AS ontime percentage.
Actually I was and if you had been following that I am staying put for the time being and I hear you about UA again I was not being critical of AS rather just a post thats all. Hey I have 84K invested with AS YTD a lot of butt time !
edgewood49 is offline  
Old Jul 30, 2014, 8:07 pm
  #13  
FlyerTalk Evangelist
 
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Northern Calif./Eastern Ida.
Programs: Amethyst Premier Plutonium Medallion
Posts: 20,619
Originally Posted by edgewood49
Actually I was and if you had been following that I am staying put for the time being and I hear you about UA again I was not being critical of AS rather just a post thats all. Hey I have 84K invested with AS YTD a lot of butt time !
Gotcha just trying to put it in perspective. You're right, I lost track of those threads about your possible change!
PV_Premier is offline  
Old Jul 31, 2014, 9:09 am
  #14  
FlyerTalk Evangelist
 
Join Date: Jul 1999
Location: ORD/MDW
Programs: BA/AA/AS/B6/WN/ UA/HH/MR and more like 'em but most felicitously & importantly MUCCI
Posts: 19,718
Originally Posted by PV_Premier
if you think AS has bad operations, i invite you to spend a few consecutive weeks flying UA instead. that ought to bring you back down to earth and make you grateful for AS ontime percentage.
UA has been racking up a woeful on-time rate in the low 70s these past few months. I'll take AS.
BearX220 is offline  
Old Jul 31, 2014, 12:59 pm
  #15  
Original Poster
 
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Mountain Time Zone
Programs: AS Million Miler/Marriott Lifetime Titanium/ IGH Ambassador
Posts: 5,987
Originally Posted by BearX220
UA has been racking up a woeful on-time rate in the low 70s these past few months. I'll take AS.
you know I kinda wish I hadn't made the post !! AT the end of the day I think we all hope that AS maintains it's "free agency" I know I am "heavily invested " in it !
edgewood49 is offline  

Thread Tools
Search this Thread

Contact Us - Manage Preferences - Archive - Advertising - Cookie Policy - Privacy Statement - Terms of Service -

This site is owned, operated, and maintained by MH Sub I, LLC dba Internet Brands. Copyright © 2024 MH Sub I, LLC dba Internet Brands. All rights reserved. Designated trademarks are the property of their respective owners.