jsguyrus

You know I get it, AS/QX messed up by not offering competitive pay and lost a bunch of pilots without replacing them. They have fixed that (kind of although if you watch the pilot forum it leaves you wondering), but it will take a year probably to get back to where they were. In the meantime I wish they would just reduce the schedule to one they can actually operate and I will figure out what to do with my booking. A realistically reduced schedule is way better than these constant cancellations!

3Cforme

That's not as black-and-white as you want it to be.

What level of pilot staffing is enough? Enough to cover a big weather event? Enough to cover the schedule if pilots don't pick up extra trips at a typical rate? Do you want to staff & schedule for a 100.0% completion rate? The questions of crew and fleet utilization are key to profitability.

If you want to argue that ALK execs misjudged attrition and trip pick ups as they slow-rolled wage increases for Horizon pilots I wouldn't disagree, but hindsight is 20/20.

PV_Premier

I think most of us would say that we shouldn't be able to materially tell the difference between AS ops and QX ops when it comes to on time and completion. So, the default ought to be to staff QX to a similar standard as AS mainline. AS mainline melts down when SEA/PDX get snow, I guess we could all tolerate the same from QX. The problem is that QX has been on a slow burn that has recently had a nice dose of propellant thrown on it.

PV_Premier

AS can't run with WN for O/D traffic if they are only going to give SMF 2x nonstop a day to PDX and at relatively crummy times at that. Quite a sad state of affairs this has become if that is expected to be the new reality. I am hoping that this is just happening during this period as it's one of the lowest travel periods of the year and AS is just trying to "CYA" and free up the Q400s for other core routes where they can't get away with the lower frequency even during the lull between Thanksgiving and XMas.

jsguyrus

I'm sure its not that simple and my background is not airline operations or scheduling, that said this should be something that professional airline managers are capable of doing.

tphuang

ALK is a very frugal airline group and that has helped them achieve a really great margin the last few quarters.

Now they have squeezed QX too much and feeling the effect of their past decision.

Pilots are finally now in a position of power and unless there is a downturn, QX simply don't have enough pilots and it's not getting better for a while.

A bigger issue is what happens with the mainline pilot. They are in arbitration and both AS and VX pilots have been paid significantly lower than legacies. At some point if arbitration doesn't work out, mainline pilot would be able to strike. Or they could obviously just give a much deserved pay raise to the pilots. Jetblue, Spirit and Frontier are all facing the same issue now. They just haven't boiled over like QX.

tusphotog

Earlier this month I was on a delayed mainline flight and got an unrequested $75 as an apology for the airplane breaking and having a two hour delay.

FWIW, now that I’m qualified for 75K again, I’m booking nonstop mainline AS, AA & WN flights the rest of the year. If I can get an AS flight through LAX or SAN, I’ll do that, but I’m staying off QX as much as possible.

ucdtim17

The AM PDX-OAK and PM returns are the flights that I'm on so 2x 737 at those times is fine with me. It's a relatively meager offering compared to WN though (but that's also the case today).

The insistence on keeping these routes Q400 is bizarre and disappointing. The timing of the QX staffing woes lined up exactly with the timing of AS wanting to make a big splash in CA. One of the easiest things to do would be shift these long Q400 routes to other aircraft to free the crews up to cover other shorter routes. They could have issued press releases with the airports hyping the service improvement. Instead we get this haphazard month by month schedule tweaking and no way to know more than a month in advance if a flight will actually be flown as scheduled.

northwesterner

But, generally, they're using the E175s to do flying that Q400s can't do. I'm personally surprised we're not seeing Q400s on SJC-BUR, but the E175s are being rotated through that route on PDX-BUR and SJC-PDX, both of which would also be "long" Q400 routes.

ucdtim17

They've put the E175s on new, shorter intra-CA routes because they want to offer a competitive product against WN. For whatever reasons they don't have interest in attempting to compete on PDX-OAK/SMF in a similar way. PDX-OAK was 6x mainline before the recession in '08; it ultimately dropped to 3x Q400 and despite the recession ending long ago, and AS wanting to expand service in CA now, they still don't want to budge it from 3x Q400.

PV_Premier

Follow the money. There is more money at stake in the south bay and SFO than SMF and the east bay, or so AS thinks. And honestly, they're probably right.

Asquared1

Never thought I'd be happy to see my flight rescheduled onto a CRJ2.

ucdtim17

It's not surprising their primary focus is SFO and SJC. It is surprising to me they seem to be going out of their way to not improve service at OAK though by continuing to insist on keeping it on the Q400 rolls and therefore making the QX staffing problems that much more difficult to cover.

jsguyrus

Keep in mind that QX only has around 8-9 E175's and has deferred delivery of aircraft as they don't have enough pilots to fly them. With that small number their jet routes are not fully built out so they are super inefficient route wise.

Now we are seeing a majority of PDX-SEA shuttle flights operated by Sky West with CRJ7 and CRJ2's.

eponymous_coward

I sat next to an AS pilot on the way back from SJC (two actually, but the other pilot was pretty quiet). He not only was talking about why there's a "loop" when taking off from SJC (I correctly guessed it's to keep from interfering with SFO), but offered his opinion on this: "totally foreseeable when you're not paying regional pilots enough, it's surprising that Dave Campbell (Horizon CEO) hasn't been fired yet."

My QX flight that morning (RNO-SJC) was on time, even with some de-icing.