Originally Posted by
johnso29
Thanks for the reply sailingfun. Since it sounds like this AE will be a 365 day conversion window, & the plan is to have the 30/40's parked by January 2011, does anyone think that there might actually be a surplus on the DC9? The DC9 fleet will essentially be cut in half, so would that be accounted for in this AE?
Not to argue but point out the math being presented at recurrent:
Right now there are 68 DC-9's (give or take a few as spares, mx, etc.)
34 are -50's; all painted, most with new seats, and all planned for wi-fi this summer.
The other 34 will go away sometime in the next 12-14 months, but:
Right now they are flying the fleet at around 4.5 hours average a day; tech ops hazards to guess they could support up to and over 6 hrs a day. (a 50% increase) And they could firm up the flying as they park the smaller ones, smoothing it out, if you will.
So best case scenario, they would still need ~75% or so of the current DC-9 pilots for a worked-to-the-bone all -50 fleet. Of course worst case is oil back at $150/bbl and they all get parked.
I don't think the draw-down in DC-9 pilots will be as fast as some have predicted. (We did finally get our own little icon on the Flt Ops page!)
The economy is the real decider; the Diesel 9 is the flex fleet.
My take..