LBBflyer

With SDF as my home airport, I am over-exposed to Mesa as my only choice to travel west on American. As a family, we are 3/3 in holiday season delays and cancellations resulting in unscheduled overnight stays at DFW. I booked Christmas flights back in September with 3/4 mainline legs (with the other on Envoy), but I am now 4/4 on Mesa CRJ9's. Unfortunately, there are no more mainline fights on my routes and no seats on the few Envoy flights.

Because of this, I have been keeping an eye on Mesa's performance over the past few weeks, and everything had been going ok until the last two days. Starting yesterday, the cancellations in the CRJ9 fleet have really started piling up out of the DFW, with no weather events of note. Strangely all of the cancelled flights out of SDF have been subbed with a Republic section with a 9XXX flight number. Can anyone shed light on what's happening to Mesa currently? Is it maintenance (as is typical of their dogged CRJ9's) or crew issues? Thanks.

bchandler02

I'm the opposite, in a way. I booked my travel to avoid mainline service given that I'm about 85% YTD for flights that are delayed. My hope is that the regionals won't have as many issues as mainline has been having.

Unfortunately the route I am flying is usually on an Envoy 175 which would be great, but for two weeks around christmas, has been replaced with a Skywest CR7.

StevenSeagalFan

Mesa stock is down but after an earnings miss of -120%, I’d meltdown too.

LBBflyer

Already up to 24 CRJ9 cancellations today, or 5% of their flights. The day is young, I'm guessing they end up easily higher than 50.

KeithRedford

Based on the website airlinepilotforums looks like it's lack of first officers.

jhalapin

Was supposed to fly Mesa yesterday afternoon at 3PM from DFW to FSD. Goes mechanical then Cancelled. Luckily I had called the EP desk and had them protect me on the next (and last) Mesa flight at 7:20ish. Also delayed then cancelled.

Had to get home before the winter storm headed this way and booked a $1400.00 one way DFW to FSD on Delta in the only class they had available (F) and got home at 1AM.

Well, at least it added to the Delta challenge I'm doing

guv1976

Had you asked AA to protect you on the DL flight before you spent $1,400 of your own money? AA has an interline agreement with DL (and with UA, too).

jhalapin

Nope. I booked it and didn't check in while I was on the phone with the EXP desk getting protected on the next Mesa flight (that left about the same time as the DL flight). I figured I could cancel the Delta once I knew the Mesa flight would go.

I got the last seat and my employer actually paid for it and he's fine with my decision.

Bradhattan

LBBflyer

Looks like marginal improvement today as they’ve only canceled 35 flights. Yesterday ended up at 48. Hopefully there’s a full recovery this week or I’ll be prepared for at least one long stay at DFW.

KBMIFlyer

Flight 5969 scheduled to depart DFW - BMI at 1:20 pm and arrive at 3:16 pm, currently scheduled to depart 8:40 and arrive at 10:36 pm.

Return flight 5969 scheduled to depart at 10:46 (10 minute turn) and arrive at 1:09 am!

So not cancelled, just an 8+ hour delay.

The normal scheduled overnight flight 5913 is still on time to arrive at 10:29. Since BMI only has one DFW gate wonder how they are going to handle two planes.

I am scheduled to go out tomorrow at 7:05 am, I am hoping at best at this point I have a one hour delay or so since either crew will not get in until about 11:00. I chose a 3 hour layover in DFW based on prior experience with Mesa.

LBBflyer

Looks like your delay is a little longer than you hoped at 2.5 hours. Hopefully you can still make your connection at DFW. My Mesa to Mesa connections are less than 45 minutes both ways. Not what I originally booked, but what the AA computer decided was best, and honestly there wasn’t much better to try to get moved to.

LBBflyer

KBMIFlyer, I hope you made your connection at DFW yesterday. I am curious how your experience was. I can't tell if the situation seems to be getting better or worse after the weekend.

FlightAware shows Mesa with 20 cancellations today (all CRJ9s) and 25 tomorrow (all CRJ9s). I have to say that SDF seems to be taking the brunt of the cancellations with 2/4 flights showing cancelled on AA.com Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. With Republic replacement flights only scheduled on Tuesday. I supposed it hasn't turned into a meltdown for Mesa as they've been able to keep the cancellations from growing, but with holiday travel loads quickly approaching at the end of the week they surely need to get this sorted by then.

Either way, I booked expensive back-up flights on Southwest for next Saturday. I know they their staffing issues as well, but those are the only two choices.

jhalapin

Looks like they are preemptively cancelling flights. Wife and I had a flight back from SGF to FSD on 12/24 at a very reasonable 11 ish departure connecting to a 3P flight that got us back a bit after 5.

Both of my flights have been cancelled and we were moved to a 6 AM arriving at 10:45ish. So now it’s up at 3 AM for the drive from Branson to SGF to catch a very early flight.

Better than last Thursday where I had to book the only seat left on a Delta for tons of money to get home before a winter storm I guess.

YMMV

LBBflyer

That is interesting to know that they have been proactively cancelling some flights that far in advance. I noticed that it appears that many of the other SDF-DFW flights are not showing available in purchase search, so they are probably either sold out or cancelled.