Of course the prior contract allowed a greater number of CR9's then the current contract and with aircraft deliveries coming it would have been very simple to pump and dump to reach those numbers. Yes they would have had to reduce the CR7's some to accomplish that but they could have had more of the 9's everyone states are such great aircraft.
Keep one thing in mind. The people involved in the contract working for us modeled every possible option the company had with regard to long term fleet plans. They had airline experts to assist in that not keyboard cowboys. The company had many different options. The current plan was simply one choice among many. Several of the other plans would have been ugly for us but legal under the existing contract.