Originally Posted by
Waves
Hey Guys,
Rumor in the FA lounge is that this summer their flying will increase to 87 hours and no leaves. Although my commuting FA wife is not pleased or amused, something must be going right in Mecca land. I don't recall the average for last year, but it was much lower, probably 75-78 hours with lots of leaves as well.
About a hundred pages back, there were some posts on the MD-90's. Anyone care to update that? How many, and where from? Are we getting any of those Saudi MD-90/MD-11 cockpit aircraft? Anyone know if we're going to update those we do get to the MD-11 cockpit to outfit for NextGen?
Thanks, Waves
I'm going to make a wild assumption here but I doubt we'd ever see the Saudi MD-90s or make our MD-90s match the Saudi/717 version. The reason being is a) look how slow other somewhat simple upgrades were to the ER category aircraft such as the TWA 757s, and b) wouldn't we practically have to go through Boeing on the STC? Why would Boeing help us circumvent buying new 738s from them?
I wonder if the rumors are true that this happened:
AirTran: "We'd like a larger 717 with greater range."
Boeing: "Great, here you go, the 737-800."
AirTran: "No, we'd like a 717 that is bigger and has greater range."
Boeing: "No problem, here you go, we call it the 737-800."
AirTran: "Fine."
And I think Ryan Air showed up in AirTran colors with A320s. And then I think 9/11 happened and AirTran ordered a bunch of 737s later for cheap.
All that to say we might be running into the same brick wall if we ever entertained the idea of upgrading the 90 fleet.