Make no mistake, the decision by United Airlines to terminate its regional contract with Air Wisconsin was deliberate, strategic, and will ultimately serve the long-term growth goals of the carrier.
Why United Airlines Dumped Air Wisconsin And Why American Airlines May Gain Little From Its New Regional Partner
In short, United Airlines announced it would not renew its regional jet contract with Air Wisconsin. Shortly thereafter, Air Wisconsin announced a new partnership with American Airlines. Air Wisconsin will fly CRJ-200 aircraft for AA from its Chicago (ORD) hub.
Brett Snyder (CrankyFlyer) heralds this move as a victory for American Airlines, arguing, “This isn’t about airplanes. This is about pilots.” He asserts that American will benefit because it will force United to cancel routes and with pay increases, American Airlines can retain pilots at Air Wisconsin.
I often agree with Snyder, but like View From The Wing, think his analysis is faulty here. Snyder makes a huge presumption in concluding that Air Wisconsin pilots will stay onboard. Quite the contrary, I think they will pivot to the “big leagues” as quickly as possible…which is exactly part of United’s plan.
Think about it. Air Wisconsin pulls pilots from United’s Aviate Academy. These young men and women were being metered to United and had to “put in their time” at a regional like Air Wisconsin before actually becoming United pilots. With United’s pivot to more mainline aircraft and a need for more pilots, many of these young pilots can go immediately to mainline, bypassing regional flying altogether.
Did you know that the qualifications for joining the United mainline pilot team are 1,000 hours of fixed wing turbine time and 1,500 hours of total flying time, which is only slightly more turbine time than most regional airlines require to become pilots? As long as United maintains strict quality control over its pilot candidates, it will have access to a larger pool of candidates than will carriers like American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and Southwest Airlines which currently require more time (budget carriers like Frontier, JetBlue, and Spirit require similar levels as United).
How will this look practically? In the short term, I do expect United to stop serving some smaller destinations, certainly be a loss for those flyers (CRJ-200 service is better than no service at all). American Airlines will have a niche in serving more destinations.
But even that remains to be seen. Already, Air Wisconsin has been unable to utilize its entire fleet because it does not have enough pilots. With United highly likely to siphon more pilots away, I expect Air Wisconsin will experience further trouble trying to serve routes in an operationally efficient manner.
The writing has been on the wall since 2019 with Air Wisconsin. Its operational performance was not meeting expectations even before COVID-19 and United Next now lays out a new set of goals and priorities, with a much greater focus on mainline flying. Those dated, uncomfortable airplanes (and frankly their higher operating costs on a per-seat basis) have no home under United Express.
CONCLUSION
I think few would disagree that United’s long-term strategy of refreshing its fleet and focusing on mainline and larger regional jets over small ones will be favored by passengers and pay dividends. I also don’t think the move to dump Air Wisoncin undermines United’s important status as a network carrier. The question is what will happen in the short term. I think Snyder is wrong and that United is not acting too quickly. Quite the contrary, I think United will leverage the dumping of Air Wisconsin to build a formidable reserve of mainline pilots, which will propel growth in both large and small cities for years to come.
image: Air Wisconsin
CRJ-200’s – Pissing off America 50 people at a time……
@ HB
Perfectly stated…
Nailed it. I avoid that plane like I avoid the hood…
Air wisconsn, cant get a flight out of either maintenace base to save their life. They are always late with some excuse or another. Good luck AA, You will need it.
I won’t miss Air Wisky, and hope their young pilots do come onboard as Matt predicts.
Speaking of Wisky, I guess it’s United’s middle finger to AW after AW got United in the news for a drunk flight attendant in 2019. It follows a similar pattern with two other stories. In 2018, a Trans States flight attendant got drunk and United was put on blast for that. A couple of years after, United terminated contracts with TS. in 2020, United got sued by Nathan Davis because a racist Expressjet flight attendant accused him of having a weapon. Months later, United terminated contracts with Expressjet.
Do you think all of AW’s CRJ2s will be repainted to AA colors or will a few continue to fly for United but under a different partner like Skywest or Commutair?
The agreement between ZW and AA is for “up to 40” aircraft. The current Air Wisconsin fleet is 55 aircraft – so it’s possible that ZW sells some frames but highly unlikely. They will probably use them for parts.
Having endured hundreds of United Express flights on CRJ-50s operated by Air Wisconsin I say GOOD RIDDANCE! Yes, good riddance to a terrible record of delays and cancellations, surly and poorly trained gate agents, frequent delayed baggage scenarios and cranky fight attendants. Thank you Scott Kirby and team!
The gate agents, at least at ORD, are all United agents.
Jason is correct and I am sorry I unintentionally maligned 99% of the United gate agents at ORD. I realize I should not not have generalized, However, I go way back with Air Wisconsin to a period of ( I can’t remember how many years) when Air Wis employees were working the Air Wis gates at ORD. After reading the words “Air Wisconsin” in the post I immediately recalled those bad old days.
Or FAs like this:
https://liveandletsfly.com/drunk-united-express-flight-attendant/
This isn’t a win for American.
Whether you like Scott Kirby or not, he is by far the smartest and most airline savvy of all the airline CEOs, and United is strategically set up better for the future than any other US airline.
Hey Jared!! I just hate the food he serves, both on the planes and in the clubs! I think he’s a real hypocrite. But hey, maybe you’re right, only time will tell. 🙂
United is always all talk but nothing ever really happens
You are wrong. Continental will screw this up too. They could be, but the greed in the end, will sink them. Munoz the magnificent is still running the show. He ain’t an airline guy, never was, and is the real reason that they will fail.
Munoz? He’s long gone.
And even if he wasn’t, he did a lot to course correct United’s dive into becoming what AA has currently turned into. He fixed a lot of what “airline guy” Smisek broke
Such a sad state of affairs for Air Wisconsin. I worked with them for 20 years (until 2002). It was such a quality regional carrier. We were proud to be a part of the operation. It’s such a shadow.
You also said it was a shrewd move when I dumped Stewart.
I ask why anyone in their right mind would deal with united as an employer. When employees that refused to be vaccinated with a serum that doesn’t work, they fired them. Most were customer service rep’s, with longevity, and knowledge.
And the criminal element among their managers is one area you have never explored or reported on. Do your arguments for their so called academy are of little relevance. This is Continental airlines for God’s sake, not United airlines, so please reevaluate your opinion!!
If they are pulling from the aviation academy, they are all gonna be low time women of color.
Because that is what the Chicago HR core of United wants. They are all about Identity Politics first and qualifications and quality second and third.
This is most certainly NOT Continental Airlines. This is their Chicago leftwing Identity Politics and that sure as hell did not come from Continental.
Spoken like someone with no skills that was passed over for a minority and is blaming affirmative action. Look just because they are black doesn’t mean they aren’t better than you. Stop using race as a crutch
Chicago, United Headquarters, black lesbian mayor. Houston, Continental Headquarters…uh, black lesbian mayor.
Stop blaming the place where I was born, raised, and live (albeit in the burbs now) for your inferiority and racism.
After the merger of “equals” when United bought Continental , the CEO of United left and Continental management ran the airline ( almost into the ground) and still run it today with rules favoring former Continental employees over United employees.
That’s really an unreasonable statement. It’s not unreasonable to oppose affirmative action, but it is unreasonable to question the skills or competency of any graduate of the program. United is not going to entrust its aircraft to pilots who are not qualified.
I’m of the opinion that this move was necessary for American to replace its flying with Mesa. It’s a short term expedient. The new Air Wisconsin flying in Chicago will allow Sky West to redeploy aircraft to DFW and Phoenix. Those redeployed aircraft, plus the 11 new CRJ-700s Sky West is bringing on, and the 15 new E-170s Envoy is adding will be enough to replace Mesa (which just upped its pilot’s pay, and I’m expecting Air Wisconsin to do the same). I also expect Air Wisconsin to buy some of Mesa’s CRJ-900s. Much of this is purely speculation which could be dead wrong.
Your pilot premise doesn’t make sense. United has no issue getting pilots, and neither does any other legacy carrier. The issue is their regional carriers getting pilots. Isn’t Brett’s point that this adds a large chunk of pilots to their regional flying?
It is bad for Communities, Air Wisconsin and UA, and I don’t have to elaborate! It’s very obvious to all except Matt!
For the small communities that may lose air service, it is no doubt a loss. But customers hate this jet and AW simply did not fit into UA’s long-term plans.