Originally Posted by
TenYearsGone
Hi Bud,
You keep on bringing this up on a lot of posts. Your question is valid, but Delta can and does employ mainline employees to service these aircraft, currently (minus FA/pilots). They can "man" the 76 seaters at mainline, profitably. Put 90 seats in them and let us fly them..The 14 extra revenue seats will allow this.
Please answer these questions I always bring up and no one answers:
1)What will you do if Delta decides to put 82-90 seats on the expanded fleet of 76 seat DCI jets? More than likely, imho, we will allow them to. Looking at the past 2 decades, this seems to be the trend, would you agree?
2)The 76 seaters are 90 seat hulls; what is the difference between the 76 seater (90 seat Rj) and the 717 (110 seat jet)? My answer is, on the next downturn or "bird in the hand"/"time-value" argument, we will lose that flying to DCI. Do you see why this TA is upsetting?
Bill, I agree with you about the 50 seaters. THey are gone. The pay, too, is ok for me (although I wanted more than 30%). What I am having a hard time understanding is the continual allowance of bigger, more effective and capable DCI aircraft.
This has and will to continue to degrade our profession.
What is 18.8% pay raise in 3 years? especially after inflation, taxes and mainline career erosion? Is it worth it? Remember 18+% is the compounded rate. All of the sudden people round it up to 20%.. Why the spin?
TEN
Bud,
I can see where you are going with this, but I respectfully disagree. You know an operation is a lot more than just pilots and FAs. It's mx, sims, ramp people at out stations as well as hubs, etc. Huge costs, and DCI is already doing it for cheap. And these 90 seaters, are you talking about the CR9s? I flew on a Mesa CR9 in CLT once and I think it had 84 seats (?), and it was horrible. Delta likes the "first class" option for it's best customers, so I think the 76 seaters are big enough. It appears DL isn't very interested in the E190, and I read that the C-Series planes are fairly expensive. So, if that is the case, then what are some other options for that "100 seat" market that has eluded us for the last decade? I think it is the 717, which is cheap used, but can recapture a lot of the routes we used to fly. That is huge! The MD90s are supposedly under $10 million each, and I bet the 717s are close. You can't be those deals, on the -90s and 717s.
Then, park 200 plus 50 seaters. That alone is huge. You have to admit that some other RJs will have to fill in for those routes that the 50s were on, and logically that would be one step up, the 102 70 seaters, plus some 76 seaters. Add a good ratio that favors the pilots, make it a short duration, and almost 20% in 2 1/2 years, and it's a good deal, especially compared to a hunch.