Originally Posted by
Tomcat
Any larger aircraft that may possible replace the DC9's will be flown by mainline pilots. Anything that is greater than 76 seats will be flown by mainline pilots.
Ultimately, I hope that mainline Delta will have many good pilot seats for those of you at the regionals can move into when this financial storm subsides. I'd like to see an industry where professional airline pilots have a solid career and be able to take care of their families instead of constantly being "whipsawed" against one another.
I sympathize with many of you, as I spent nearly three years on furlough at Delta. All I can say is we all need to tighten our belts and get our financial houses in order. It's going to get ugly.
Respectfully,
Tomcat
i agree with most of what you say and i hope a lot of it is true. since we already have 76 planes on the regional tickets they are going to stay there. hopefully that is as high as the seats will go. and hopefully the dc9 replacement will be flown by main line pilots.
as far as things getting ugly you might be semi right. on the large scale i don't see things changing to much. we have already seen a few regionals go under, and there might be a few more on the way out. but the flying will still be there. pinnacle has 124 50 seat rj's, and will have 16 900's by the end of the year. barring some other crazy things that would have to happen that is the least amount of 50 seaters we can have. if nwa wants to take more they have to exchange them for a 900. which i see them doing once the merger is done.
no one here at pinnacle thinks its a coincedence anderson is giving us their regional flying. when he was ceo of nwa that is when we got the rj contract. now he moves over to delta and we have a delta contract. uncle phil and anderson must be buddies or have dirt on eachother.
my hope is that mainlines continue to grow so i will have somewhere to go in the future.