Is Amtrak going to return it’s consist on the long distance trains to pre COVID?
Is Amtrak going to get a passenger loading to pre-covid or greater levels going forward?
IMO not until Amtrak getts the equipment ready to be operational ready. But Amtrak is not hiring more maintenance persons to get the equipment ready. The following by Amtrak’s Roger Harris who states that Equipment is not ready to operate with some may not be ready until summer 2022.
Welcoming Back Riders and Looking Ahead to the Future with Amtrak RNDC2021 - YouTube
Seems like a reasonable decision. What would they do with the extra workers afterward? And with new equipment coming on line soon after?
Almost as much tap dancing as a Fred Astaire movie.
I agree.
That’s the truth. I imagine it’s even more common for small businesses which don’t have the cash or credit to weather the problems the grains of sand cause.
All you have to know is that the plane that’s in Sioux City needs to be in St Louis on time so it can head for Dallas, then go back to St Louis, etc, etc.
One hang up in that mix and the problems just cascade from there.
Add issues like crew availability, no spare aircraft, etc, and watch out…
Airlines try not to have spare aircraft. Using Delta as an example, their maintenance base may have one or two that were just finished, but not even Atlanta has spare planes sitting around, just in case. That’s why sometimes your gate number changes at the last minute. Your plane leaves in an hour but something goes wrong that takes two hours to fix. So they find another plane that’s not supposed to depart for two hours, gives you that one and then your original plane will take that leg. Sometimes, it cascades over several planes.
And the same is true with the crews. If it is a crew base they have crews on ‘reserve’ that can be at the airport within a hour. Once they use all of them because crews are stranded in other cities due to weather or equipment then things start getting cancelled.
In 2007 the mandatory retirement age of a pilot was raised from 60 to 65 years old. This created a 5 year gap where there was no retirements (estimates of 150-210 per month at the time) so in turn there were very low new hires. In turn people were not choosing to go into the industry and starting the training which can take around 5 years of training and time-building to be ‘airline ready’
Since then, they have been playing catch-up including reducing time requirements and providing scholarships for training. This has the ripple effect of an already small pool of flight instructors getting hired more quickly by the regional carriers creating challenges in training more pilots.
And now with COVID adding another year gap as well as accelerating retirements, here we are.
A few decades ago - My ex and I were flying to Florida to load up my fathers belongings after his passing. Our flight was scheduled out of BWI for about 8 AM and scheduled to arrive Orlando about 10:30 or so.
We are at the airport on time and the airline announces the crew for our flight stuck in a weather hold at Albany, NY and they are going to DH a crew from Philadelphia. Flight finally got off the ground about 1:30 PM.
When I was working as a trainmaster Engineer retirements caught up with the Baltimore Division of Chessie System. One day they were ‘flush’ with engineers and the next day the hauled virtually every Road Foreman of Engines into Baltimore to work the var
You wonder whether management ever saw the PLAN Aheadsign.
In March, just as travel was ramping up again from the virus slowdown, I made plane reservations about two months ahead from Omaha to Orlando.
Over the next several weeks, my reservations were changed by one airline four times. I finally switched to Southwest, and they changed them twice.
When I asked what happened, it was explained that the airlines were having real issues getting the crews and the planes all lined up together in the correct cities to meet the huge increase in travel.
At that time, they really had no idea of how many people were going to be traveling and where they were going.
I have to say that my four flights were excellent. The crews were all in good moods, and the airport workers were all polite and helpful.
From my anecdote - it is plain that they did not plan.
There was plenty of planning. However, it was done by the accountants.
Likely. I wonder if labor - management disputes might have a role also?
When I worked in the industry, yes, they did have a hot stand-by A/C (aircraft) sitting around each of the hubs. Sometimes, as you say, it was beside the hanger waiting to be worked back into the schedule or into the hanger. Other times it was really a spare A/C and also a “ready reserve” crew was sitting at the airport waiting for a call to go somewhere, IF needed.
So in regards to this article and Amtrak expansion plans I would not necessarily get all overly excited about passage of the infrastructure bill nor would I expect to see immediate results. A lot of the routes they are proposing have not even had an EIS done on them yet. Right off the bat that is a 24 to 36 month delay in startup, not to mention our current supply chain issues and lack of critical supply of parts and how that might impact filling equipment orders. Also, as unfortunate as it is I think your going to see some of the larger 10-15 year projects like California HSR siphon off money from the Amtrak pot, sounds like Texas HSR is going to attempt to siphon off money as well. They also stated they wanted to catch up on all the ADA requirements on NEC and ancillary lines…that will take money. Deferred maintence over the past 20 years will suck up more money. So this first tranch of $66 Billion. Don’t expect to see a lot of changes, it’s more going to be treading water I suspect. They are due a second tranche of $10 Billion in the second Infrastructure bill if it ever passes, in my view that should be amped up to $50 Billion but chances are it will be reduced from $10 Billion prior to passage.
Delta, at least, doesn’t have “ready reserve”. They have “long reserve” and “short reserve”. You may be on both during your reserve period. Long reserve is when the airline knows beforehand that they may need you in 12 hours. Short reserve, you have to be at the airport in 60-90 minutes.
PLD is Paid Leave Day? What we cal PL, a paid personal leave day. (Our company can’t afford to use 3 letter status codes, we only get 2 letters. If we’re lucky, maybe in addition a number. Same with our train symbols. We only have 2 letter/number codes for origin/destination points.)
I’m also guessing 65 miles is half (basic day now being 130 miles) of a day? We still use 4 hours or 50 miles for half of a day, even though the basic day is 130 instead of 100 for most jobs. A half of a basic day for me pays about $130.
I’ve been vacinated, but so far they’ve only offered cheap trinkets for doing so. I know of a few who are planning on looking for new careers come January. I think some will change their minds. At least I hope so, some are good railroaders.
Others have mentioned that they feel the company will use the reduced manpower to unilateraly impose one person crews.
Jeff