QX cutting flights due to pilot shortage
 

Horizon Air cutting hundreds of flights this summer due to pilot shortage

http://www.seattletimes.com/business...ilot-shortage/

This has been brewing for some time now. For the pilots side of the issues see: https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/h...izon-jets.html

And for an overview of the problem: http://www.askthepilot.com/pilot-shortage/

For those of us who fly QX a lot we have all been seeing increased delays and cancellations for months now. Hopefully they can staff up and increase their reliability.

which means July is going to be hell. Cue United's Summer From Hell when On time dropped below 60% and they were cancelling 15% of their daily flights.

Thank god Im Gold 75k- we get helped first. Lord help those at the bottom of the reaccom lists....

Maybe this will mean a few more VDB opportunities on QX flights this summer ^

Maybe they can cancel those beloved OAK-PDX flights :)

They've been subbing QX E175s (pre-June 15) and OO E175s (after). It'll go QX E175 on Saturday for the month of July but then, back to regularly scheduled Q400s as far as the eye can see :mad:

If QX wants to lighten their Q400 load, it's the most obvious route to hand over to QX E175s, OO E175s or 737s, but so far no dice

problem is, this is the end of Q400 flying at Horizon for Alaska. The moment they dangled those shiny jets in front of those pilots, the thing between their legs got bigger than Mt. Hood.

Its all a shell game to keep their costs in line, despite that SkyWest has been really good lately about managing crews & planes. Now Horizon is in the mix (there's NO need for 2 E175 operators at AS) they are going to divert all their attention to the E175 program and let the Q400s go bye-bye.

Maybe its time we start our own airline and staff the Q400s :P

i was hit with this for an upcoming flight on BOI-GEG...looks like it's down to maybe two nonstop flight per day now...i think it was 4 or 5 previously. they call out SMF-PDX as an impacted route, but i'm not really seeing it in the schedule compared to "normal".

YKM-SEA lost one round trip daily. Honestly that is fine if they can operate the new schedule in a reliable manner. The old schedule was so hit and miss as far an being delayed less than an hour I was beginning to think I would just start driving to Seattle.

Price increases on QX routes?
 

I'm seeing a 10% increase on PDX-EUG through the end of schedule. Additionally seems like a number of AS destinations are increasing priced as EUG-PDX + PDX-CCC rather than through fares. One way to decrease demand for QX flights.

Looks like one PSC-SEA was cut as well. What gets me is that they also cut the only PSC-PDX flight, even though they said they were targeting city pairs with multiple daily flights.

This has been going on for a while...probably since the early spring.

I've started avoiding QX after a two hour delay on PDX-YVR. That flight was delayed further because the crew needed a "45-minute rest break" after coming in from their deadhead. So, I'm only flying the PDX-SEA shuttle and booking the Skywest or mainline Alaska flights. QX is a last resort now.

That is awesome if you live in a city that has mainline service. For us out here in the backwoods it's QX or drive 3-4 hours.

Coverage in Slate http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/..._shortage.html

There are not as many pilots due to the insane new requirements to be a pilot. It's cheaper and quicker to get your PhD. And there is no reason for it. Doesn't help that pay isn't that good, but certainly not the only reason why there is a shortage now. People can't afford to meet the new arbitrary requirements to fly for an airline.