The guarantee was
199 aircraft. At 11 pilots per aircraft, we would have 2200 pilots on property which would hypothetically mean:
- Everyone here today would have seniority to hold Captain
- Current Captains would be off reserve
- Nobody would need to go to JFK or CVG
- We would have twice as many untrained crew schedulers
- Today's furloughs would instead be Captains or very senior FOs
- The most junior furlough would instead have 700 pilots below him
- We would have a crew cost in line with other DCI operators
- Driver would have twice the flight attendants to photograph for his avatar
- Nobody in DCI would be griping about Mesa
Some of that could be argued, of course, since if things were that sweet we wouldn't have 400 pilots leave last year, a lot of the new guys would have missed the hiring wave, etc.
Now as far as Comair having too many 50s, the 2005
"199-aircraft deal" would have given us mostly 700s, so we'd have close to 60 or 70 on property today. Too bad Comair had a trip to court while Delta grew the rest of DCI.
Just imagine how much money Comair could make for Delta if we had those 199 aircraft parked to save fuel.