From another thread and moved here...
Originally Posted by
Herman
Even if we could use these a/c in our fleet, I'd be much more excited if we were discussing the acquisition of additional 777's. We need "Super Premium". Still...a nice ride though.
Herm,
You'd be more excited about ordering a few more heavies than acquiring the SWA 717s, right?
Unless we order 4 dozen or so 777s, I'm kind of the opposite in that I'd rather have 717s than some new 777s and here is why:
Right now we staff our 88 at about 11 pilots to a plane and the 777 at about 29 pilots per plane.
If we acquired 88 pure growth 717s then that's nearly 1,000 new pilots... and not just any pilots, DC-9 pilots! The best kind.
To have nearly 1,000 new pilots because of 777s we'd need over 32.7 pure growth 777s. The .7 will be I guess the domestic version.
There are only so many WBs this capacity disciplined company wants especially with JVs out there. My bet is the first 16 777s would be 744 replacements.
To equal the number of new pilots to our list that the FL 717s would add we'd need to acquire 49 777s.
49 777s is expensive. It's an airplane I think ordered by the dozens every other week by a middle eastern airline, they have no problem selling those things.
88 FL 717s are cheap because they're unwanted by everyone from new airlines to their existing lessor and lessee. It's a lot of bang for the buck.
But to me the 717s put pressure on the 76 seat fleet because we probably will end up taking their good routes and pushing them over to the 50 seat routes. Which given that CASM is a route and aircraft based thing we might help spoil the appetite for those airplanes.
Right now we're down 252 aircraft smaller than the DC95. We had 252 in 2000, 0 now. We had 0 50+ seaters in 2000 and now have 255 with 153 76 seaters poised to grow to 255 of the 255. Thus we're missing about 3,000 pilots.
If the 717 and 1,000 new pilots can help the company regret that missing 3,000 pilots from our seniority list as much as we regret it, than I'm all for 717s over 777s.
And if anyone doesn't like it? Fine. Come Friday, I'm beating Check and ACL's $5 bucks for the winning mega million numbers and I'll go fly a Cessna 172N around! I may not post here again.
And maybe I'll fly something bigger. It is $476M you know.