This week’s featured link:
United and ALPA Reach an Agreement in Principle to Extend Pilot Contract – United Newsroom
United has been on a labor relations-roll since it kicked out its old CEO. It has a tentative agreement with its mechanics, it has decided to open negotiations with its airport workers early, and now it has a tentative deal with its pilots to extend its agreement a couple years.
While this is a positive sign for the company, it’s particularly interesting to see the pilot deal. Why is this happening so quickly? Well the big talk is about United finally bringing on a 100 seat airplane. It can’t be the 717 since Delta and Hawaiian own most of those. Will it be a bigger Embraer? Or will Bombardier finally get a C Series order it so desperately needs? If it’s the latter, I can only imagine what a smoking deal it’ll be. What’s your take?
Two for the road:
Air Canada Unveils Major Expansion to 12 U.S. Destinations – Air Canada Media Centre
Trump may be thinking about building his wall a bit further north. After all, this is a massive Canadian invasion of the US. Of course, this kind of invasion will be welcomed with open arms.
Fake Black Friday – Imgur
This has absolutely nothing to do with airlines, but in honor of Black Friday I couldn’t resist. If anyone needs some spare copies of Air Bud, I have 86 of them available.
7 comments on “3 Links I Love: A Small United Airplane on the Horizon?, Air Canada Invades the US, and Black Friday Deals”
Would love a copy of air bud Mahalo Cal
While I would love to see 100-120 seat frames at UA I’m not holding my breath. Top leadership has changed but the ‘outsource everything’ crowd is still in place. The 319s coming from China Southern will backfill low end capacity. Barring a collapse of the Express network (which is possible) due to pilot shortages I can’t see mainline flying 100-120 seaters.
Oil won’t stay cheap forever. When you take current projected op costs and add $75+ p/bbl oil the 100 seater is a no go.
Great news on Air Canada adding Chicago – Vancouver, I really enjoy their product and think the in-flight service is always great. As Platinum/now 1K with United, Air Canada has upgraded me a few times if first has open seats. It’s a nice upgrade, that is never expected.
And United’s operational performance has also improved. More evidence that firing Jeff Smisek (even if it was officially for a different reason) was probably the best decision anyone’s made at United in a long, long time.
02NZ – Couldn’t agree more with you. The past month has been a whole new United – I’ve been really impressed. I fly several segments a week and all have been smooth (let’s hope it stays this way).
The satirical Black Friday ad is good, much funnier than the SkyMaul catalog parody I own.
I really don’t care that Air Canada has added its 2nd US destination from YVR. Right now only EWR is currently operated by AC, the rest is express or Rouge and if you think Spirit/Ryanair is bad….