Originally Posted by georgetg

Delta and WN are playing hardball with Boeing, that's the holdup...

Delta already deferred all outstanding 737-800 slots (I think it was 66) so that helped WN get their new "super premium" jet quicker... It's possible Delta's 739 deferral by a few months helps WN get more 738 delivery slots in the near term.

GK has already outlined how he plans on backfilling the capacity pulldown from the 717, he just won't retire the 737-300s as planned as new jets come on-line. That's a no brainer for WN: keep the jet that's already painted and configured for WN and common to the network while slowly eliminating the too small, not painted wrong configuration jet that is native to only the Airtran side...

The DC-9 sim will move in Q4, 2-3 months to certify is March 2013, DC9 retires late summer...really?

HA bought 15 717 from Boeing Capital September 2011 for roughly $12.5M a piece.
Boeing Capital owns approx. 80 of the 80+ jets at Airtran, you think there might be a volume discount?

Cost comparison CR7-CR9 are between $20-25M
AA paid roughly $40M for their new 737-800
Delta got the bigger 737-900s for about the same price
List for the C-Series is $40-50M

Delta paid around $400M for two 777-200LR market rate interest. Air India got ExIm bank low interest loans for their 777s...

Per RA's recent talk the difference in interest rate, not purchase price between DAL and Air India is worth 3M/year for 30 years.

Same lift:
80 717 at $10M/piece is a $800M contract...
62 738 at $40M/pice is a $2.4B contract...
130 CR7/9 at 20M/piece is 2.6B contract...

The interest rate on $400M loan can make a $3M difference a year

Now imagine what cutting the purchase price in half does for the loan...
Now imagine a quarter the cost...

CASM is completely irrelevant in this context...Its highly subsidized by the dramatically lower debt servicing aka "rent"...

The 319 isn't an orphaned fleet type as the 717, hard to imagine getting a desirable airframe for less than $20M. All the efficiency in the world won't help if the cost is twice as high, especially when trying to dig out of debt. To top it off the A319 has a 11.6% performance penalty vs the 717...As a result, the A319 talk is chaff, plain and simple.

Delta will get the 717 because it is such a no-brainer, its a smoking deal and the company doesn't need our help to get it. Together with the MD90 the 717 will over time replace the MD88 fleet at Delta and help make the transition to true next-gen aircraft a decade down the road without accruing a debt burden that makes future moves impossible...

Cheers
George