Originally Posted by
Bucking Bar
Sort of ... .
- Legacy carriers and Southwest have shown remarkable capacity discipline. This has driven prices up. It is a temporary gain to be sure. Nature abhors a vacuum and carriers like Spirit will grow to fill it as quickly as they can. Our action (including AA and United) might even save Virgin America.
- We don't own the RJ's. As capacity has shrunk it has forced Delta's partners into losses. The 50 seaters can not be re-deployed outside a network and remain profitable. They have to come up with a "plan B."
- Plan B is probably going to be high performance turboprops, which are not currently constrained by our scope. Bombardier will gladly resupply the market. The Q-400 has great operating numbers, but allegedly passengers don't like it. It's other problem is it's 737-800 sized footprint which makes it a bit of an elephant at a ramp developed for 50 seat RJ's. (ALPA is aware and I expect turboprop scope to be a part of C2012)
We need a competitive small jet that
we fly.
Bar,
I hear the MX reliability of the Q400 is not good. Have you looked at those numbers.? Just curious as I don't know if it is true.