Originally Posted by
acl65pilot
Trust me George I know. RA stopped dogging the GTF's a little over a year ago. The change did not go unnoticed by me.
I fleet of the 320 series makes a lot sense for a lot of flying we do. the 321 is not a 757 though. I suspect that 15% is good but absent a clean sheet design we will probably shy away from signing on to fleet renewal with the current generation of jets. Maintaining or growing a given fleet, yes, but not total replacement.
With the amount of jets we need and the varied missions there is not fleet that meets all of the needs that will compete with the next get stuff. A re-engineing of the 320 makes good sense, but I do not know if DAL would sign on to replace the entire narrow body fleet for the savings touted.
Either way, talking of new jets is good. Signing on the dotted line for new or used growth jets is better!
Agree on the used jets, but I'm pretty sure that's a stopgap measure.
The EIS for the 320neo is 2016, the 321neo is probably not until 2017.
DAL has the worlds largest Airbus fleet right now, that makes it easy to get good pricing...
The 320neo family is a wet dream for a network guy who can mix and match planes and routes domestically.
The 757 ETOPs birds have a secure future as the 321neo cant even come close in range and falls short on passenger lift.
The old and new strategy served NW well and I'd imagine RA will stick with some of that...
I just hope were're not looking at trading in 7ER rates and replace them with our current 320 rates to fly the potential 757 trans-con replacement.
Right now is a good time to place orders and "get in on the ground floor when prices are low" then take delivery 6 years from now at a great discount...
Cheers
George