Originally Posted by iaflyer

A few notes to add from the DTW crew room visit:

MD-88/90 has 41 more years of life, so don't expect them to go anywhere. Flat panel upgrade approved, all by the end of 2015. But it's only the ADI and HSI upgraded, picture showed engine instruments all the same. The big driver on this database size, very small right now. Also it will allow RNP in the future.

Hiring- 2014 for summer 2014. No budget for hiring in 2013 but that could change in the next 90 days. By "hiring" they means Furlough bypass, Mesaba, Compass. Then maybe Pinnacle interviews and others.

Next bid has been discussed a lot, nothing new but I'd expect lot of 7ER FO displacements. JV flying to smaller European cities (ie, big DL planes to AMS, CDG, small AF or KLM to smaller cities like Berlin) very profitable for Delta, so not much need to 767 flying to TXL, VLC, AGP, BUD, etc). Seemed like a long term problem.

ER Flying: West coast doing Asia, east coast doing Europe, leaves DTW/MSP ER doing domestic. Seemed like the latest plan like they have said.

Tablets won't be an iPad, Microsoft contract too big to ignore. But, even though every other airline using tablets is using an iPad and is approved by the FAA, delta is "working with Microsoft and Jepp to develop software for a Window 8 device" so maybe this year for 717 folks and about 200 test devices scattered around the fleet.