Originally Posted by
alfaromeo
Fleet size means nothing except in the context of how many block hours per day each aircraft flies. I kept an old car around for years because it ran well, it was paid off, and it cost me almost nothing to keep. For that I had a free rental whenever a car was in the shop or my kids needed to borrow one.
Yes, for a private car that's one thing but for a Part 121/135 airliner it's a completely different FAA regulated thing. Hell even a Part 91 Skyhawk doesn't necessarily escape an annual any more than jetliners escape required inspection intervals.
Originally Posted by
alfaromeo
With fully depreciated, fully paid off aircraft, Delta can keep extra jets in the fleet for years and years with virtually no cost. They can fly them a lot or a little. Counting hulls mean nothing. Counting block hours mean everything.
I disagree and here is why- an airplane in service is going to cost you money to have in service. Sure you might skip out on the aircraft payment but even new airplanes have required maintenance and old airplanes are many times more. If you're going to bother to pay that you better get an ROI, the thing needs to fly.
Now per the 2008 PWA Section 1 and now "fleet" in 2012 PWA, the airplanes in question at mainline for the pump-n-dump scenario would need to be in service, undergoing maintenance, operational spares. They're not free. If they were, why did we ever park paid off 727, DC93, DC94, L1011, DC10, 742, 732 and so on?
Maintenance is going to be based on whichever comes first- hour, cycle or calendar days and you're not going to escape that. And the more paid off they are the older they probably are which means the time between major inspections progressively shrinks compared to what those identical inspections were when the plane was new. New planes are cheap on maintenance, not old.
Put it this way, I saw this in particular with a corporate jet getting torn apart on it's major 4000 FH / 4 YR check, it had 100 hours on it. The cost of the inspection was still $250K. The way you can skate some of this is to pull it out of service and do temporary storage games but then it doesn't count for pump-n-dump.
Which to me the whole idea of pump-n-dump required DAL to acquire 80+ jets, have 800 in active service and then park them to acquire 255 CR9s/E175s... but at the same time have to park 102 CR7/E170s all to gain 600 seats at DCI? I think it'd be an irrational nonsensical stunt no right minded accountant would've allowed. But I'm sure the same people who worried about 700 Dash 8-400s would have bought into it as a legit threat.
Originally Posted by
alfaromeo
But I am sure you will prove me wrong by posting another picture from the internet.
Well, I'm not going to do th... okay you got me...
