Originally Posted by JungleBus

Regarding the topic of making sure large turboprops are covered by the C2012 scope clause:

I can speak with a little authority on this subject, being as I flew Q400s for Horizon Air for several years. We operated them in a single-class configuration, 70 seats at first and later 76. Same passenger count as the E175 I fly now, despite a max gross weight of 65k lbs vs 89k lbs. The thing absolutely sips fuel... we're talking roughly half the fuel burn of a E175 at middling altitude cruise, at 360 KTAS vs 440. Break even load factor, even with Horizon's relatively high labor costs, was something like 35%. Its one downfall was reliability. It's an absolute hangar queen. The very best Horizon ever got out of them was around 98% reliability, and that's with in-house maintenance that was very experienced on that airframe. Basically deHavilland was sold to Boeing and then Bombardier during the development, and Bombardier rushed it to market without ironing out all the bugs. That's the one thing that has stopped airlines from ordering these things by the hundreds. But for the reliability problems, it's far more efficient than a jet on any route under 500nm, and is unlimited by most scope clauses.

The reason this is important is that Bombardier has finally started to sell a lot more Q400s in the last few years. As the type becomes more common, the bugs are slowly getting ironed out. Meanwhile Bombardier is planning an even larger type based on the Q400, projected to hold up to 100 passengers. Whatever DAL management's current public position towards turboprops, they will take a very good hard look at this if they see it as a way around scope clauses. It could be an MD80 killer in certain markets. As an outsider looking in, and someone who hopes to be at DAL soon, I'd suggest mentioning turboprop scope in your contract surveys. I'm not sure it's even on DALPA's radar, but it should be.