Old 01-01-2009 | 09:02 AM
  #19  
sailingfun
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One thing that should be mentioned. All the talk about moving aircraft is good but I would not get to wound up about it. Talking with people who will be making the decisions it does not look like there is going to be a lot of fleet rebasing in the near term. It involves way to much training. As long as a current base has enough departures on that equipment to get the pilots into the system with a reasonable amount of credit time on the built rotations they will not be in a hurry to close bases and move flying. Using MD-88's out of MSP or A320's out of SLC does not mean you must move the pilots. Delta is very training sensitive. These types of moves have huge training impacts. I would expect to see little if any domestic fleet basing changes in the next 3 to 5 years. International will be a somewhat different story where its harder to build rotations without credit if the crews are located in the wrong places. Still even these changes will be incremental not wholesale.
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