Thread: Best and Worst of 2013: Where do you Stand??

I didn't know Frontier would even be ON the list--are they even a major carrier?

Being high on the list of extreme delays and 2 hour tarmac delays pretty much explains the complaints. Unfortunately, we fly into areas that lend themselves to lots of delays and cancellations. High up on the good stuff, though, so I'll take it.

Delta is consistently bad with oversales. I remember a few years ago the top 3 airlines for bumped pax were Delta, Comair, and ASA........all under DL banner. NW wasn't exactly the best in that regard either, so I don't see a monumental improvement coming any time soon.

$27,500 per pax.........means a tarmac delay on a 757 with 180 pax will be FIVE MILLION bucks! 360 pax 747 you're looking at 10 million.............Obviously B6 only operates smaller fleet types, but I'd be cancelling too.

Btw, I had to laugh a few months ago when a station manager I was working with misunderstood that DoT rule and freaked out when the galley trolley of tarmac delay contingency snacks was unsealed, which he assured me would result in a fine from TSA

DL--Wonder why they sold ASA several yrs ago and shut down Comair last year? Aircraft substitutions were a big issue with these 2 carriers in particular.

Locking yourself into inflexible contracts with third party carriers and only being able to cut capacity via your wholly owneds leads to the long term spiral Comair experienced. I believe they got to the point that the most junior FO was 1999 hire. With virtually every crewmember topped out on pay scale and infrastructure for a much larger airline than they had become, there was no way Comair could stay in business. ASA was lucky to be sold off while still a desirable and viable merger candidate.

Ah, aviation!

One of my best friends was an always single Comair pilot w/DOH 1987. Super nice guy, no ambition to move up, flew what he wanted (mostly back/forth whatever city he wanted) Now he has no job so he's been retired at 58 and makes pottery (bit of an oddball hippie type w/Purdue degree). Kinda sad--his choice.
Comair really ruined themselves with some serious screwups that cost DL hundreds of thousands--a little software issue pre Christmas one year when all the crews timed out at the same time and Gee, I forgot to order deicing fluid at Christmas a year later...

This industry is so dynamic. It's tough to stay ahead of the curve with all of the changes. I'm sure it's a lot tougher for a pilot, with seniority being the huge factor it is. I hope your Comair friend is at least enjoying himself.

I think the lack of deicing fluid/crew scheduling meltdown were part of the same incident. Of course any airline must plan for contingencies, but many airlines/hubs have run short of deicing fluid before (I've personally had my airplane (nice widebody with a few hundred pax) stuck a couple times due to shortages of deicing fluid.........one of those times we had contracted to use DL's stock.......but they ran out). While Comair shouldn't have run out of deicing fluid, it was caused by a weather phenomenon of record snowfall for the region. That lead to a massive amount of crew scheduling changes, which basically broke the software. The whole situation was such that one thing lead to another, the root cause being poor weather and poor planning……….though still far from acceptable. They basically had to do exactly what Jetblue just did this week.

I think the biggest thing Comair did to bite the hand that fed them was the pilots’ strike…….Don’t think it went the way they thought it would.

Whether calculated by DL or not, the biggest thing that did Comair in was being the only wholly owned, and the only regional with a flexible contract allowing a reduction in flying. DL needed to cut CRJs, and Comair was the only place to cut them without penalty. This lead to the airline being much larger than it’s fleet, and the labor costs being way too excessive to ever compete…………which allowed a really big reduction in CRJ flying when they all went to the desert (TUS I think).
I find it kind of funny that many of my current colleagues started with airlines such as: Eastern, North Central, PSA, TWA, PanAm, and little ones that have long faded into history, like Mohawk, Cascade, Bonanza, etc. Hopefully I’ll be around in 40 years telling my younger colleagues about starting with little old Comair.