Originally Posted by dragon What is the other shoe?
Does anyone really think the 717s were the perishable event that drove the company to the table? There is something else major out there and I only hope that the DALPA guys with the signed NDAs know what it is and that is maybe influencing their decision to push this TA to us.
Any ideas?
Originally Posted by
johnso29
I still think it has to do with future consolidation in the industry, and how DAL will capitalize. But this nugget was in the latest NN....
The Company’s desire to accelerate the reduction of the number of 50-seat aircraft lies far beyond their ability to do so*under its present contracts with their DCI carriers and aircraft manufacturers; these restrictions provided the basis for the MEC’s decision to engage in expedited negotiations.*
I think it has a lot to do with the 255 >50 seat RJ limit. We are at that limit now and thanks to our grievance settlement over planned fleet growth vs actual (the actual never happened but the RJs were ordered any way) Delta would now have to grow the mainline fleet over 767 aircraft to start swapping the CRJ700s for larger aircraft. This could take a while and Delta may end up having to keep some mainline aircraft they plan on parking around for longer.
This deal is needed by Delta to allow them to get all of this started without worrying about getting to the 767 mainline aircraft limit to trigger the 3-1 conversion language. As others have stated this get debt shuffled helping Delta reach their 10B goal early.
I think I could have lived with that portion of the agreement if a sunset agreement had been written for the CRJ700s instead of grandfathing them permanently at 107 additional large RJs.
Vpr