Originally Posted by
iaflyer
My guess is that the "no new planes" is the story this year. The company is trying to rein in their capital expenditures and debt load - I guess it's making Wall Street nervous. Also, companies seem to make bad long-term decision to keep cash flow going to pay debt.
That IS a big plane - this quote got my attention:
A source with knowledge of the situation says Embraer responded to a request for proposals to replace American Airlines' McDonnell Douglas MD-80s with the so-called E-195X.
Regional aircraft - whatever. These are mainline-sized aircraft, doing mainline service. They need to be flown with mainline pilots.
I think as long as we can get MD-90s at bargain prices, Delta will. Why pay all sorts of money for a new plane when a used one will do more, for less? The difference in price can pay for a lot of mx. Of course, there is a limit to the number of MD-90s in the world... but look how long it took to get the China Eastern ones? I've been hearing "more MD-90s are coming" for two years!
I think what else is interesting is EMB was the clean sheet airline post the ERJ-145 cabin dimension lessons. Great plane but a turboprop cabin. The 170/195 was clean, their corporate jets are all clean sheets except for their Legacy 600. I think to do a 195 stretch shows they want a quick time to market and they don't plan to go beyond 130 seats which the 195 could easily do a 100-130 seater and I think you'd find less friction on making that a straight mainline jet as the CASM for crews will be lower than the CASM for a regional crew on a 76 seater. And while we can be jaded about the whole replacement jet issue I think the truth is the cost of crews divided by the number of seats is a factor until I think you get above 100 seats then it becomes wiser to have that critical load being done in-house by people you control. I'm sure Bar has the numbers from that website that only he seems to know how to get data out of.
I think if EMB tries a 150 seat with that 2x2 seating that thing is going to make a 753 look like a A319. EMB has had a long standing position of not going into the 737/A320 size battle zone and I think its interesting Bombardier is either waffling or non commital on going beyond 130 seats too. That might be the limit and maybe Bombardier will finally hit the start button on the C-Series and maybe we can have one of these two planes here in short order to make sure we're a growing airline. Maybe have as many of those as we once had DC9s.
So again, not talking airplanes, talking jobs for DAL. II hope this chess match between aircraft manufacturers turns out good for us. I think a stretch high power EMB-195X is a cool idea. I think the C-Series is a cool idea.
Just late night chatter.