Originally Posted by
Timbo
And that's why the 76 seater is going to die on the vine, we don't need to 'trade' anything to recapture that flying, it will have to come to us (or to a 100 seater, and right now, WE own that flying) as fuel prices go up and the minimum wage pilot supply goes down, if we hold the line at 76 seats.
2 quick observations.
1. The 50 seater and 76 seater are not going to die for economic reasons. I think there will always be two economic reasons for them... 1) RASM-CASM game and 2) whipsawing us.
Need proof? The E190. It sucks, they don't want it here, union even says it sucks. So I guess then it's okay to lift the scope clause and say 50 E190s is okay at DCI, right? Because surely, they'd never order it even though they have 70+ E170/175s with higher CASMs than the E190.
2. We think the 76+ seaters belong to us! But we don't unless it's ordered and even then an LOU could torpedo it. But in real life they simply don't have to order anything, and therein keep to the nothing new below an MD88 at mainline unless it falls in our lap for free. See the illustration below.
Originally Posted by
Timbo
I'd vote for it, but most guys I fly with wouldn't. We all know the hardest working pilots at DL are the MD88 F/O's!
And we look damn good while we're doing it.