Holy Flight Loads Batman!
- Thread starter EDUC8-or
- Start date
kellwolf
Piece of Trash
BobDDuck said:
Man, if we turned the APU off after engine start in MEM, we'd have to ride the brakes to get enough air going through there to keep from dying.
Depending on the temp, we'll keep it on until the climb check (normally around 3K ft). Depends on the CA/PF/Whoever-the-current-CA-lets-make-the-call, some guys turn it on at 10K as part of the approach check (if it's hot), most turn it on after landing. The reasoning behind turning it on before landing is by the time you hit 2 minutes to transfer the bleeds, you're already at the gate.As far as overbooking, most airline do it because of a no-show factor. Take SWA for example, there is a HIGH no-show factor in MCO, so you might see flights overbooked by as many as 30-40 people. I've seen a lot of flights in the summer booked to 167, and the plane holds 137 (if it's a 300/700). The highest I've seen is around the 174 range. Marketting has a demographic they use when they determine how much to overbook. Which is why when a new station opens, you'll only see 137 seats for sale the first couple of months. They're computing the average no-show factor over a given amount of time. The longer flights run on a route, the more data they have, the closer they can guess to running a full boat.
Like was mentioned earlier, FlyI tried the no overbooking thing, but with the CASM of a CRJ, you almost have to with a low cost structure.
wheelsup
Well-Known Member
BobDDuck said:
Besides the SE taxi most of us turn the APU off right after t/o (unless we forget...) and I try to remember to turn on the APU on final or maybe a bit higher if there is ice (no longer a problem
). I realize that in descent the power is back and airflow through the packs in the 200 is greatly reduced as well. I'm all about comfort .All our planes also have the coffee maker out, but it was more to reduce w&b issues than a weight savings. Our aerodata and PDC's should come through the ACARS here shortly, and with the last aircraft having its flap AD worked on in July hopefully we'll be able to take advantage of the best flap settings/flex #'s for t/o.
That comment about how "we don't pay for gas" is so ignorant it makes my blood boil. I guess there are still some people that don't 'get it' as far as these things go, however. I will be posting something about fuel saving techniques on our company message board once I get off probation. I actually want US Air to be successful and I would hope the company would be working with US Air in that regard. Would you happen to have a copy of that fuel report you can share with me? I haven't ever seen such a report, and I would be interested in seeing it (if you don't want to share I totally understand too, no biggie
).In AWAC's defense, I know they begged and pleaded with UAL to get GPU's in ORD for many many months to no avail, and maybe they just gave up hope of ever getting through. With all the jetbridges in PHL one would think that US Air would be having us hook up the power and LP air. Oh well...why save $$ when you can just take from your employees, right?
BobDDuck
Island Bus Driver
Our managment wouldn't actually give us a copy of the fuel report showing we burn more then everybody else. As far as I can tell there isn't one and they were just making it up to beat us over the head with. Our union did come up with a fuel savings plan which is mostly common sense stuff but does have some interesting things on it. If I can find a copy and get permission (it's not really public yet) I'll get you a copy.
As far as ground power at PHL... the ones on the jetways are the wrong HZ or phase I think. They were set up for the Dorks and Dashes which use a different setup then the RJs. Go figure. And good luck getting an actual GPU there. It takes hours to get one even when you call for it in range. With it being as hot as it is now we are leaving the APU running even in CLT when we do have ground power. However, once it gets colder I would bet they will be turned off.
I'm doing OE on the 700 right now (fun plane by the way) and the bleed system is controlled via the 6th and 10th stage which means that you can cool the plane even with the APU off. It's start the engines and turn the APU off, which I have forgotten to do on the last 3 legs.
As far as the lack of caring about fuel savings at AWAC... From the outside it looks as if it has to do with the senior guys still hoping that you go back into the UAL system and they can all go home. Not logical, but that's my take on it. I really think the whole fee for departure thing needs to go out the window and the contract companies start paying their own way. Won't happen of course, but's it's a nice pipedream.
Wow... it's amazing what 3 hours of airport appreciation will make you write.
As far as ground power at PHL... the ones on the jetways are the wrong HZ or phase I think. They were set up for the Dorks and Dashes which use a different setup then the RJs. Go figure. And good luck getting an actual GPU there. It takes hours to get one even when you call for it in range. With it being as hot as it is now we are leaving the APU running even in CLT when we do have ground power. However, once it gets colder I would bet they will be turned off.
I'm doing OE on the 700 right now (fun plane by the way) and the bleed system is controlled via the 6th and 10th stage which means that you can cool the plane even with the APU off. It's start the engines and turn the APU off, which I have forgotten to do on the last 3 legs.
As far as the lack of caring about fuel savings at AWAC... From the outside it looks as if it has to do with the senior guys still hoping that you go back into the UAL system and they can all go home. Not logical, but that's my take on it. I really think the whole fee for departure thing needs to go out the window and the contract companies start paying their own way. Won't happen of course, but's it's a nice pipedream.
Wow... it's amazing what 3 hours of airport appreciation will make you write.
EDUC8-or
Well-Known Member
wheelsup said:Would you happen to have a copy of that fuel report you can share with me? I haven't ever seen such a report, and I would be interested in seeing it (if you don't want to share I totally understand too, no biggie
I'm not sure where we saw anything mentioned about a fuel report, just the fact that our company STRONGLY encourages fuel saving measures. It leaves quite a few of us who really try to conserve fuel scratching our heads how certain other companies that don't use the same conservation measures have the same fuel numbers on paper. I would say most of us really try to save gas.
I'm not bashing anyone here and as I previously stated, I understand why the numbers would look a certain way on paper.
BobDDuck said:
Well in your next 3 hours structure a contract between mainline and a contract carrier that is not fee for departure. There is nothing mainline would like more than to get out of fee for departure, but they don't know how to.
The revenue in the back of the plane doesn't belong to that leg, it belongs to the customers entire flight. How do you apportion that revenue to the contract leg? On a $600 fare from Birmingham, AL to London, England, how much goes to the contract leg, how much to the transatlantic leg?
It's easy to say get rid of fee for departure, to some extent I agree, but what would you replace it with?
wheelsup
Well-Known Member
CFIse said:
mainline feed (ie don't farm out the feeders, keep it all in house)
problem solved
will it happen? no...but it's wishful thinking at least. I think the comairn strike probably put an end to that (I'm not upset they went on strike, they collectively raised the bar for which many good contracts since their time were based upon).
wheelsup said:
Yeh, well, we can all blame ALPA for that. They didn't want to fly the "little" planes at mainline so the camel got it's nose under the door and that was that. Mainline can't do feed for anything like the cost of a regional mostly because of pilot cost - so unless mainline ALPA is willing to go there it's not coming back.
At least with USAir we've seen the line held at the 90 seater mark, although I'm not convinced we won't see that breached at some point and then mainline ALPA will again have to decide if they want the flying or the money, because they can't have both.
wheelsup said:
I guess I don't see why the ComAir strike killed mainline feed, it was long gone by then anyway.....
BobDDuck
Island Bus Driver
It's been breached already. Mesa is flying a few 900s (with only 88 seats) and PSA was just offered 20 900s with 20 more options. The problem? We are going to have to take a pay freeze to get them. The preliminary polling shows a pretty resounding no vote so we will see. The only positive is that Airways is trying to put more express flying in house. They just are insulting us while they do it.CFIse said:
GaTechKid
Well-Known Member
The same system Colgan has been operating under for years. They set the price for many of their routes and only collect the proportionate mileage portion that they fly of the entire ticket cost minus a US Airways booking fee, i.e. A passenger books a ticket from JST to ORD. Colgan flies the JST to PIT route which is ~60 miles. US Airways flies the PIT to ORD route which is ~600 miles (I'm guessing here). Colgan earns 60/660 of the ticket cost minus a booking fee.
At least that's how it was explained to me by my IOE captain...
GaTechKid said:
Well Colgan does operate under a pro-rate agreement, but much of Colgan's flying is EAS, which is just transferring the guarantee from mainline to the government. For example, JST to PIT is an EAS route - so any pittance Colgan picks up from mainline is just gravy on top of it's EAS fee.
I also suspect that the pro-rate agreement is a little more complicated than you describe, mostly because on a trans-atlantic ticket for your 60 miles you'd earn not much more than 50 cents, which even most airline management will be able to tell you isn't a viable per seat cost. I actually believe that Colgan sets the price of the JST-PIT ticket based on it's contract with EAS, and the mainline takes a marketing etc. charge out of that ticket price and then adds on it's own charge for the PIT-ORD part for total ticket price, but I don't know that for a fact, I just read between the lines in the US Air and United annual reports.
Sadly we'll never know the facts, Colgan isn't a public company, and their mainlines don't divulge the details of their contracts.
You can't operate a regional airline with variable costs (fuel etc.) without having some control over your revenue (ticket cost). This is actually why I believe a successful business model for somebody like United would be to stop flying airplanes, and just franchise the name and provide central ticketing, marketing etc. Then any operator can, with approval, operate from anywhere to anywhere on any equipment, set their prices as they will and may the best company win. Probably only works on the domestic routes initially, but eventually operators would appear who would also handle the international routes as well. It's more complex than that, just like franchising a McDonalds is more complex than attending McUniversity, but not much more complicated.
As pilots - we'd better hope that never happens, otherwise we'll look back on the good old days of the current pay at the regionals and wish we could be making that kind of money again.......