Captain Blue Sky (or any other savvy flyers)

[riu girl]

Captain Blue Sky, you offer such a wealth of info. to this board.

Question:

As I'm sure you are aware I air is having difficulty getting their new A319s in the air and I have no idea if they will have any new A319s by my flight dates (BUF-IAD-MCO) Dec. 18 - Dec. 31.
Now there is talk that the A319 routes will be flown by RJ's.

Have read that the IAD-MCO routing with RJ's would require stopovers (in most cases)

Any thoughts of this? I am already planning a stopover in IAD and really don't want to do another with two young kids in tow. If I called I-air and told them my situation, would they help me ensure that I am on a IAD-MCO flight segment without a stopover? I have only spoken to them once and their customer serivce rep did not seem at all helpful. The people on this board and www.flyertalk.com since much more informed.

Any thoughts on all of this would be greatly appreciated.

I have spent some time on www.flyertalk.com and someone is even suggesting that I air will file for Chapter 7 and Southwest wil buy up their aircraft. What do you think of this ?

Good luck with everything going on with your airline. I just finished reading your post on it and it sounds like things will work out for you.

Thanks again
Suzy

 

[Captain Blue Sky]

Hi Suzy,

Yes, unfortunately, that is what we as flight crews are hearing about Independence Air; that they will be filing Chapter 7 liquidation plans with the SEC, and it looks like it will be in December...

YIKES! That's soon!

But these are only industry rumblings - nothing is cast in stone at this point in time...

Independence Air is having a real struggle, for sure. I road out to my gate yesterday on an Independence Air tug, operated by a very amiable ramp worker. According to him, they haven't been told anything about their own airline and the relative sickliness of its finances...

Regarding the multiple stopovers on regional jets from IAD to MCO: Actually, the range of some of their RJs would be able to operate without a stop. Independence flies Canadaire Regional Jets, and they can easily span the 750 nautical miles in the route.

As far as their Airbus aircraft: no go.

Thanks for the positives about ATA/AirTran. Time will tell...

 

[riu girl]

Captain Blue Sky,

Thanks for the info. I WAS feeling pretty positive about our Dec. plans with I-air until I started reading about Chpt. 7 filing on www.flyertalk.com last night. YIKES!

If you hear anything else about the possibility of I-Air filing Chpt. 7 in Dec. , can you let me know? I am so worried that our travel plans won't work out. BUF-IAD-MCO Dec. 18 -31.

Suzy V.:

 

[PlutoPony]

Going against my better instincts and "biting" on this thread.....

Read the "flyertalk" forums and saw the same discussions about flyi's financial state - and didn't see anything new reported. It's a good forum w/ useful info and I enjoy perusing it, but many things posted there are educated SPECULATION (same as on other boards).

The word here (where they're based) is next steps will be flight cuts and raising prices. Yes they're burning thru cash faster than they expected - BUT SO IS ALMOST EVERY OTHER DOMESTIC CARRIER!!! Yes, there are other rumblings, and I don't mean to totally discount them. But there's a whole lot of misinformation out there on the various airlines - from employees on. Geez, I had a conversation Friday w/ a US Air FA who told me they were far ahead of their bankruptcy business plan. Huh And this was the day after they announced losses far worse than the analysts expected !

Suzy - The situation is out of your hands and there's nothing you can do about it right now. The number of people who have tickets on bankrupt and potentially bankrupt carriers is astounding! Hope you can take the advice given to you here and on Flyertalk and relax - maybe spend your time on the more enjoyable task of planning how you're going to spend your time at WDW

Good luck

 

[riu girl]

Thanks for the info. provided in this thread.

Suzy