Originally Posted by Carl Spackler

It's hard to judge man. Even with cargo, the 737-900ER is a very capable aircraft and could easily do the mission. The other good part is how much slower the airplane is. Since this TA only cares about aircraft block hours, the 737's smallness makes it cheaper for pilot costs, while its slowness helps out the block hour metric. The differential in speed alone could allow Delta to cut an entire flight out of the JV and still be good with the longer block hours produced by such a slow airplane.

For all those reasons the 737 is not only viable, it's very likely. If we kept the EASK metric, then this theory wouldn't make economic sense.

Carl