Originally Posted by gloopy

I think in many cases we can completely can a lot of the "long term contract" flying and Delta is only on the hook for the aircraft leases. While we would still have to eat those, we would get out 100% of the fuel, MX, crew, middle management, most insurance and all other costs, even if we parked them and ate the leases 100%.

Some of those lease costs could likely be significantly mitigated when it comes time in the very near future to talk turkey WRT new leases for 100-300 narrowbody aircraft plus regular existing lease renegotiations anyway. "Sure, we'd be happy to go with your leasing company for these XX Billion dollars worth of leases over the coming decades, if only we could get out of XXX Million in these useless RJ leases we could totally pick your company over that other one" kind of thing.

But in any case, worst case we park them and eat the leases only, which is only a smal part of the massive RJ deadweight bloat. If we recapture scope, we can cancel some agreements early and assume the leases, which we're paying 100% for anyway, and I'm sure we can come up with some alternate bogus day trader tomfoolery paper trick to pretend those lease obligations aren't on our books when every BBA sophomore and above knows they are and always have been Let them play the seperater certificate trick within our own airline, as there is no need to outsource to a true third party provider to do so.

The ACMI air groups offer absolutely zero value other than the miniscule pocket change we get from the inherent savings derived from all of them undercutting eachother by a perpetual few perent anyway, and that is largely eaten up in redundant management overhead, operational inefficiencies and product/service degredation in the first place.

We can dump most of them, assume the leases, fly them ourselves or park them and if gas keeps climbing the "deal me an ace" crowd can agree to fly them for free and they won't make economic sense. Being on the hook for the lease payment is nothing compared to a massive fleet of insanely cost ineffective outsource jets.