PSA Airlines (OH, Dayton James M. Cox) will take delivery of its first of thirty CRJ900s (msn 15317) on June 2 the carrier has announced. The aircraft, ordered direct from Bombardier Aerospace (BBA, Montréal Trudeau), will be operated on behalf of American Airlines (AA, Dallas/Fort Worth) by PSA Airlines, a wholly-owned subsidiary of US Airways (Phoenix Sky Harbor). At the current rate of production, PSA will take delivery of all thirty CRJ-900 aircraft by June 2015.
Referencing the airline's two other subsidiaries - Piedmont Airlines (PT, Salisbury, MD) and Envoy Air (MQ, Dallas/Fort Worth) - Kenji Hashimoto, American’s senior vice president of regional carriers, told reporters that there are no plans to consolidate the three carriers into one single entity noting that they all played an 'important role' in providing regional feeder traffic to their parent.
“All three play a very important role in achieving regional feed that is really important for our regional customers,” he told the Star Telegram.
Of the three, Envoy will face the toughest future after its pilots rejected a proposed contract earlier this year that would have guaranteed the carrier sixty E175s American currently has on order in return for a wage-increase freeze.
With the downsizing of its fleet and pilot corps impending, it has since emerged that American last week rejected a bid by Envoy pilots to negotiate a new contract with their parent. Among the proposed changes to the existing terms and conditions was a commitment of new aircraft to Envoy.
“We were putting together a proposal that would demonstrate what we would support,” Bill Sprague, chairman of the Envoy chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association, told Forbes magazine. “...we have an agreement with seven years left on it, and we were looking for minor changes to that, most in their favor,” he added. “Once they got word we were considering a proposal, they made it abundantly clear that a proposal with the elements we were considering would be rejected.”
In a letter to employees earlier this month, Sprague warned that Envoy's plans to park fifty-nine E140s and transfer forty-seven CRJ700s to an "American Eagle" brand operator later this year would result in almost 53% of the pilot corps being rendered surplus to requirements.
