KnotSoFast

I mostly lurk and have never started a thread, so bear with me while I try to collect my thoughts and questions on this topic.


• Delta buys the planes they want. They never ask us for our input, correct?

• Network determines city-pairs, frequency and aircraft gauge. Again, without pilot input, yes?

• If a route is passenger saturated, most every day, most every flight, they will eventually upgauge, correct?

• Our lowest seat-mile cost WB is the A330-300. Our lowest seat-mile cost NB is the 757-300.

• RJ50s are probably most expensive on a seat-mile cost basis.

• RJ70/76 are likely more cost efficient than RJ50s

• The RJ50s are likely going away. And rapidly due to high costs. Pretty solid agreement there, yes?

• Our connection carriers have something like 125 X RJ50s. (could not find exact number)

• Our connection carriers have something like 225 X RJ70/76s. (again, I could not find exact number)


Please correct any of the above for errors.


Now, given that background, the Company wants relief to add +50 RJ76s.


-> So, if everybody agrees that the conx carriers will be grounding the 125 RJ50s, that is a seat lift LOSS of 6,250 seats.

-> The company wants to allow conx carriers + fifty RJ76s, with a lift GAIN of only 3,800 seats.

Huh? Are we abandoning dozens of RJ-only cities with this “proposed” RJ gauge change that will result in the loss of thousands of seats each day?

Clearly not, in my opinion. I surmise that cities which are 50-seat destinations now, will upgauge to 76 seats and then "76-only" cities will upgauge to 717, 319, CS100 etc, on up the food chain. I have seen this happen a lot on my fleet, the 767ER. Lots of destinations (Nice, Rome etc) are no longer on the ER, they are on bigger metal, now that increased traffic supports it.

So now the REAL questions I have—

Why all the pantie wadding over the Company wanting to add fifty more 76 seaters? We are hiring something like 150 pilots EACH month. And absent a catastrophic industry-wide event, pilot hiring here is likely to continue for a long, long time. All new-hires finish training with a mainline F/O seat to go to, yes?

Yet this seems to be such an absolute deal breaker for so many on this forum.

Can somebody explain the evil, ruinous and cataclysmic event that would occur at DL if the connx carriers got 50 more RJ76s as they parked 150 RJ50s ?????

And to use this as a primary vehicle to kill a potential TA ? I just don't get it. Help me out.
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