WebTraveler

If it is cancelled it disappears from the schedule, it is still on the schedule, just apparently has no seats available.

Lots of east coast transcons come in, surely they can fill one between 6:55 and 10

ucdtim17

My PDX-OAK QX flights this year have more often than not been $50-100 more than comparable PDX-SFO flights. I've chalked it up to small planes and hence fewer/no deeply discounted fares. It is more convenient though if you have to cancel to have more people already having self-booked onto SFO planes; empty seats don't need rebooking . . .

jinglish

PDX-SFO is also a FAR more competitive route--they're going up against UA with plenty of daily frequencies as well as WN now that VX isn't competition anymore, so you're just going to get extremely low fares as you would on, say, PDX-LAX. And it's not entirely a one-and-done route, even before the VX acquisition, since some of those planes continue on to SJD and PVR as one-stops.

ucdtim17

True, but QX also doesn't attempt to match the WN PDX-OAK fares. They're often just an outlier far above all other PDX-SFO/OAK fares.

rustykettel

Is ~$200-$300 the cost of a BLI-SEA ticket? I have my suspicions upthread that AS is pricing certain QX routes (such as EUG-PDX) as end on end rather than through fares to push price sensitive customers off to alternate transportation and decrease QX seat demand.

EF seat map is showing only 3 blocked and 4 open so it doesn't look like seats are being held back either.

Interestingly, EF shows availability on VS5923 that evening but not the underlying DL flight.

formeraa

But sometimes airlines will zero out a flight that they intend to cancel in the next scheduling run. When I worked for AA, we did this from time to time.

PV_Premier

it's likely that people who had booked tickets on the many other flights that used to exist on that Sunday were all put on that 8:55pm departure, causing it to become booked full far in advance. going from a flight every 30-40 minutes to just one over a 3 hour period is going to result in some significant reshuffling when those other flights get nixed from the schedule.

it's a bit surprising to me that AS isn't handling more of the PDX-SEA traffic with 737s during this QX crunch, but I guess with their aggressive growth recently, they don't have the frames to do it.

Bethelite

That is part of the reason, but absolutely not the "sole" reason. There are lots of reasons for the shortage, and more than one possible solution:

http://aviationweek.com/commercial-a...pilot-shortage

Baze

I rea in the news, wish I could find the article again, that regionals are fighting hard to get the 1500 hours requirement removed back to the old 250 hours requirement as they can't find pilots with the proper qualifications and that the low stating pay exacerbates the problem.

And how many of the regionals fly on their own and not as part of a contract with a major? That is if not owned by the major. They bid low to get the contracts so they are already starting in a hole as to what they can pay their employees.

AS probably found a way for it to be cheaper to contract SkyWest in better planes than it costs them to fly the Q400's everywhere.

jsguyrus

My guess is Alaska uses competition between Horizon and Skywest to keep cost low for itself, having them bid against each other. I doubt they would been keen to loose either.

Baze

Well, Horizon is owned by Alaska Air Group which also owns Alaska Airlines and Virgin America, so don't think there is much bidding going on with them.

jackal

Interesting article. And good question about what starting pay would be required to incentivize people to become pilots (or incentivize pilots who already have the requisite training to stick with the career instead of defecting to other career paths).

I don't know what that figure is, but let's say that it's double what they make now. If the average QX pilot pulls down $70/hr, the average Horizon stage length is 1.5 hours, the average load factor is 80%, and the seat capacity is 76 seats, then on any given flight, $2.20 per passenger goes to pilot pay.

Double that pilot pay and now the pilot pay component increases to $4.40 per passenger per flight.

I don't know about you, but I'd be willing to pay $2.20 more for an airfare if it meant that the pilot flying my plane was much more likely to be experienced and safe because they have >1K hours.

So yes, contract payments from AS to QX will have to increase, but to double or even quadruple pilot pay, rates (and consequently fares) won't have to go up all that much. Seems like it should be quite easy for the market to respond and bump rates up without drastically affecting fares or profits.

CZBB

AC had the same issue with 190s out of YEG and YWG in the past.

jsguyrus

Actually that already happens. The threat of Skywest taking QX routes is thrown at QX pilots at contract negotiation time in an effort for AS to keep costs down.

alphaeagle

It doesn't work that way though, flying 1K+ hours in a hot air balloon or whatever won't make pilots safer flying for an airline. It's actually the opposite, flying for an airline in a turbine powered aircraft is a whole different animal. It's far safer to have pilots gain enough experience with the basics, then start under the watchful eye and training of an airline. That's how virtually all other professional groups operate, would you care if your auto mechanic has over 1000 hours working on tricycles prior to working on cars?