S Dickson (Senior VP Flight Ops) and G Wilbur (Crew planning) came by the crew room in ATL today. I won't go into what was said since none of it was earth shattering and mirrors what has been said here. There were a few things of note I found interesting, a couple which pertain to things discussed on the last few pages of this thread:

1. The Taxiway M incident: As mentioned, ASAP accepted the incident so these guys are going to be back flying soon, if not already. What was interesting is that they looked back at previous reports (CORs, etc) and found numerous cases where flight crews had lined up on taxiway M under similar environmental conditions thinking they were lined up with the runway. For a variety of reasons, this crew, unfortunately, didn't catch the error and brought the approach to its completion.

2. The company is planning on a big uptick in narrow body flying (DC-9, MD88, 73N and A320). While the SLC M90 base is going to MSP, Wilbur said the plan is that there won't be a big displacement of MSP 320 to SLC. Rather, those SLC 320 slots will be filled by the increase in narrow body flying. IOW, the MSP 320 base won't shrink as much as one might think, which would reduce the ripple down effect a MD has on the system.

3. According to Dickson, for now the 9 MD90s we got from China are considered "growth" aircraft. The DC-9-30s and -40s will be gone by the end of 2010.

4. Network has now predicted a 7% increase in summer peak flying v. last year. That puts staffing at just the right levels, Dickson said. Someone asked about the new proposed duty regs and he said it was too early to tell until they get the final regulation, but he thought it would probably be a wash staffing wise. If anything, it might require an extra 100 bodies or so, but nothing substantial. Nothing I heard made me think we need 1700 new pilots, so I'm still not sure where that rumor is coming from.