Originally Posted by
Bill Lumberg
Too expensive. How would that be created? Pilots from mainline, but what about the FA's and mechanics? What about the rampers? Would Delta have to purchase new aircraft? What about the sims?
The problem is we already know that regional feed is very cheap, and it's getting cheaper because management continues to lower the payout for each new regional contract. United does it too. Colgan had to give up the Dash-8-400s because United wanted to lower the payments, and Colgan couldn't afford it. COLGAN! So, Republic took them. Same with the Delta regionals. And any management team and board of directors will tell you profits allow the airline to keep flying. It would be just too costly, and very complex.
Bill,
Slowplay's own number was that its 33% more expensive at mainline. Looking at the pay rates, most of that is from crew cost and the increase would only put the crew cost inline with other mainline aircraft. Delta already handles DCI at most (maybe all) of the Delta stations and has a subsidiary for handling DCI at small outstations much cheaper than Delta could do and apparently cheaper than the DCI carriers since we eliminated most of the DCI staffed stations. Delta covers every single cost to operate these aircraft plus enough extra for the DCI carriers to make a profit (usually
).
I encourage you to look into the cost associated with CRJ-900, -1000 E-175, -190 aircraft vs the 717, 737-700, 319, and MD88.
While is is cheaper to outsource it is not too expensive to in-source the 76 seat aircraft. If for some reason we ever outsourced the a320 flying it also we become to expensive for us to do as DCI would easily undercut us by 33% on it as well.