Originally Posted by
JonNYC
E190's being retried by 2019
Originally Posted by
AtlanticX
One oddity about American right now, is that they've got the A320, B737 and MD80 in serious numbers, all three aircraft having a very similar profile. Admittedly, the MD80 is the odd duck and on the way out. But still, that means right now that they gotta keep up with FAA notices and organise maintenance and parts for all 3 types, while an airline that only has either the A320 or B737, only needs to keep parts for one type in stock, and only keep maintenace engineers trained for one type available.
That's just the history of a fleet transition from MD80s to 737 at LAA, the merger with an airline with a different fleet, and the inability of Boeing to meet AA's demand by itself when they put in a very large order. The cost to standardize on a single narrowbody fleet type seems like it would be much higher than the cost of maintaining the three fleets (MD80s, 737 family, and A320 family, each of which remain very large at AA, which significantly reduces the overhead to maintaining separate fleets). It's not like AA can just trade in the A320s they have for 737s. Even if they were willing to put out an enormous amount of money, there aren't that many 737s available on the market, and Boeing can't build them that quickly.
Originally Posted by
pauleeepaul
Seems like yesterday these jungle jets were the next big thing, so as to allow more frequent service on more routes.
Well, the E175s still seem like the next big thing; lots of airlines, including AA, are still ordering more of them. It just illustrates that 90 passengers isn't enough to spread out mainline pilot salaries. The E190/E175 is the only case I can think of in which the stretch version is proving much less popular than the shorter version, and I think it's entirely because E175s can be flown with near-minimum wage regional pilots while E190s require mainline pilots with typical industry labor contracts.