Originally Posted by
sailingfun
Scroll through the A330 order book and it should be obvious that Delta can get the airframes new from Airbus at very deep discounts. We are essentially the only real customer. AirAsia X is in deep financial trouble and may never get a single airframe. The rest of the 300 orders are mostly smoke and mirrors and also may never be delivered. Airbus needed about 1000 orders at this point and might have 80 real orders. The big question is will the A330-900 program survive at all.
Good points - Iran Air (28) and Air Asia X (78) both have orders that are suspect.
If we can get lots of them at low prices, great. It's combining Richard Anderson (cheap airplanes) with Ed (new planes) - bi-winning!
I would guess if we can get them at low enough prices, that's our 7ER replacement. Yes, they are bigger than the ER but if the price is low enough, it won't matter. We could use the 350 for long-range flying that we would of used the 787 for - it doesn't seem like the company likes ultra-long haul flying anyway.