Originally Posted by
sailingfun
Delta peaked at 680 airframes at DCI. That number will be down to 450 and probably closer to 400 by 2019. Those 230 to 280 airframes have gone back to the mainline via the 717 and soon the CS100. That is the reason Delta has hired 4000 pilots with very little overall growth. The flying has moved from DCI to the mainline.
And if you do the math on ASM provided by DCI, the total number is about the same. Just with a larger share of 71-76 seater hence fewer total airframes.
DL is responding to customer demand by offering a higher quality experience with multi-class aircraft and high reliability standards. So they negotiated a scope mechanism that would allow just that (introduce C-Series and trade 50 for 76 seater).
The side effect is fewer DCI aircraft - and fewer pilots at regionals and more at mainline. Believe me, I hope that trend will continue.
But they don't do that for charity but for cold and hard business reasons. I guess, it would have been better to phrase it as "no mainline carrier will have less capacity than what is permissible under scope agreements with regionals."
I bet DL will take up every inch of scope that they have available once it is all set and done, because DCI is still a lot cheaper.