Originally Posted by
forgot to bid
That pesky CASM. It ruins every airline fantasy. But with 76 seat jets, as I think you or Bar mentioned somewhere, if you put them at mainline pilot costs go up but would it be a wash as there is no third party air carrier cost and margins to contend with?
Would a B-scale be the quickest and most plausible way to get 76-100 seat aircraft at mainline? If so, I'm open to it.
The RASM and CASM on the 70+ seat market is such that with the margins we pay to the DCI operators, putting these jets on mainline is cost neutral to cost beneficial for the Mainline Management. DAL pays 100's of millions of dollars a year in guaranteed and incentive marginalized profits to our DCI carriers. This money along would cover the up cost of the mainline pilots and our PWA operating these jets. Everyone knows it, but as any good negotiator knows management is not going to a) admit it, and b) offer us this with out something significant in return.
The economic speak for themselves, that is why offering a bi-lateral flow to the DCI outfits will again widen the gap of the DCI portfolio as a whole and our mainline costs. DCI is expensive, they know it, that is why the new term is "in-sourcing" We just need to make them realize that they need to in-source the flight deck labor too. A flow is great on the surface but all it is doing is reducing labor costs.