Originally Posted by sailingfun

I just got off the phone asking these exact questions of one of the reps. He is on his way to the ATL lounge so anyone there can ask themselves.
Basically the work rule changes in the contract will be neutral to minus a few jobs. Less then 300. Its hard to place a exact number. The two biggest drivers are ALV plus 15 and 84 hours. Both are offset in other areas to a extant. The max threshold value in PBS can only go up 1 hour and the ALV is offset by 6 more X days per year and counting vacation, training and mil leave against the reserve max.
The 717's are planned as growth airframes. The remaining DC9's will be offset by MD90's still to come online. He also had some interesting comments on the purchase and choice. Delta looked at the A319 but would get caught in the same thing they did with the MD90. We paid triple the price for the last MD90 verses the first ones. Once the market realizes you want a airframe the prices rises rapidly. The A319's were in small buckets and would have faced the same issues as the 90's. The 717 got the nod because it was one complete package. We were also not the only party looking at the 717's which may explain partly why managment wants such as quick deal.
If we lose 300 jobs to workrules the 717's will add just over 1000 jobs. The ER program should offset the 300 work rule losses and 300 is the number they are targeting. The problem is the ER gains are very temporary since they would have retired anyway at some point.