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American Airlines Will Bring Parked Embraer Regional Jets Back Into Service By June 3
According to the Senior Vice President of Air Operations at the American Airlines wholly-owned regional carrier Envoy Air, “all of the E-175s and E-145s that we parked as a result of COVID-19 [are expected to be] returned to service by June 3.” In addition all of the 20 Embraer 175 regional jets that had been operated by Compass are being brought into the Envoy Air fleet “over the next few months.” The first one, aircraft N208AN, was sent to Abilene for conformity checks by Eagle Aviation… (viewfromthewing.com) More...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
This is a positive sign that air travel is slowly but surely starting to pickup. The only problem with this aircraft - as the article notes - is that it does not have Hepa air filtration that the larger aircraft have. With Hepa air filters, disinfection measures using electrostatic foggers, mandated masks and compulsory temperature checks - flying on an aircraft can be one of the safest places to be during Covid-19 - safer than going to a supermarket which we all do at least once a week. It will be a long time before air travel returns to pre-covid levels but I believe that in a few months it should be back to about 70% of pre-covid numbers. The fact is people still need to travel long distances and air travel is the only option in most cases. Business travel - which is the most lucrative part of the business will take a while to get back to pre-covid levels as companies will replace business travel with video conferencing until there is an effective vaccine after which business travel should pick back up .
The E-175s do have hepa filters.
Not trying to be political here with these thoughts, but I do not think most here would agree that various regulations / rules do influence the airline industry, so please pardon if you view this as “political”, I am trying my best to avoid this here with my observations / comments, and trying to focus on the business operations perspective of an airline. As already mentioned by others in various ways, less expensive to fly on a per – plane / flight – perspective, but not on a per – Fully loaded passenger – perspective. Reality is these have no middle seat to avoid leaving empty if regulations are passed / made to require a middle seat be left open. Given how the US congress (any political party), most likely only “initially” think about planes with a middle seat to get rid of, they may propose regulations such that a plane can only fly with “Window” & “Aisle” seats; i.e. these planes then could fly at full capacity per the “hypothetical” regulations…. Now, if the “hypothetical” regulation is no person may be seated next to another person, 3 across coach seating will remain (no more 10 across 777s, etc…), business class seats will, I do not know, guess will cease to exist on most planes, and it would impact actually future plane design to figure out how to maximize possible passengers. Time to use imagination to determine how to store people in a plane (recall some proposal to stack people flat in bunk-bed like fashion….). Yes, things are a mess, just would like to not make things even worse….
If AA wants to fly full airplanes, this will be a good start on a . Nowadays, some people are flying on private 737's with a coach ticker.
II should never use this damn laptop.
I wonder what they are seeing that makes them think they need these aircraft online again.