Quoting crj900lr (Reply 81): That would be news to all of us over here as we were told once again that once the contract is up in 2015, Air Wisconsin would no longer be as big a part, if any part of the US/AA operations. We were also told in one of our recent calls that the maintenance hangar that ZW has in PHL is being closed sometime in early 2015 and another company will be operating out of it. What company that is we were not told. It sounds like they might be shifting any future ZW work, after 2015, to another part of the country to fill a void if what your saying is true that the ZW CR2's will be here until 2017.
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My source for my comment was
AA route planning themselves. I don't know who keeps feeding you bad info about
ZW but I am sure it is not anyone from
DFW or
PHX who works in
HQ.
That being said, there are a lot of rumors about ZWs future, but like I said, nobody knows anything for sure because nothing is public. What I do know is this. They are hiring faster than just about any regional out there right now. USAirways is paying for them to get Cat
II certified, which would be a complete waste of money if US/AA plans to just let them go after 2015. Again,
AA is going to have the
ZW planes repainted into
AE colors, which I doubt they would do if they are simply going away after 2015.
I wouid not read too much into the
PHL hangar deal. The fact is that the location of the hangar has given
ZW a lot of problems with recruiting and retaining mechanics. The big issue there is the hangar is in the city limits of
PHL. Why thats an issue is because most of the other hangars at the airport (on the West side of the field) are all in Tinicium township. The city of Philadelphia levies a city income tax, while Tinicium Township does not. Thus any prospective mechanic is much more likely to go work for Republic or Mainline where they don't have to pay any city taxes, and are probably in the case of mainline, earning more than
ZW, even though the
ZW mechanics have a pretty nice contract. I am not sure if
ZW found a hangar across the airport, or if they are just going to give the hangar to someone and base their
MX operations in Tinicium somehow so that they can attract some talent, which they have sorely needed in
PHL.
That being said, there is a rumor also that
ZW may have a lot of flying shifted to
ORD. If Eagle starts drawing down ERJ flying, this would be the easiest way to replace it in the short term. I am not sure who would replace the
PHL flying, unless they are planning to upgauge equipment and use
PHL to ramp up the CRJ-900 operation for
PSA. One thing is certain.
ZW is going to be around until 2017 or 2018 despite everyones insistence that their contract is up in 2015 (which it is, but obviously something got negotiated behind the scenes)