And also, to the guy who wrote the letter to SD regarding the rest facilities on our long haul fleet- You Sir have my respect. I'm glad someone had the courage to say what needed to be said.

The protection is that in order to do that, DL/delta.com/skyteam airlines, nonincorporated would have to lose the route from the network. I guess they could route everyone in the US through CDG or AMS though, lol!

We are acting terrified of a tiny little upstart funky fresh hip airline like VA and guaranteeing them massive (50%) growth on their end and the only thing we get is what we would have gotten anyway (either keeping the 7 or going to 0 anyway if the company decided to dump the entire continent from their network).

Well, this is going to be easy:

744- Utilized NW's staffing model which was considerably thinner and also only required 1 CA and 3 FOs.

777- More planes now!


Come on, alfa... give me a challenge. And try again on why his basic premise is false.

To extrapolate on that a bit, going forward we will order widebodies. We will have to at some point. The backbone of our fleet now are ER's. But what replaces them?

The closest out there is the 787-800 (btw how lame is it that they just call the −100 the −800 these days?) but we clearly don't want those. So we are left with several other choices, all of which are much larger aircraft than the ER. As in a lot more pax carried by a lot fewer pilots. Particularly if we keep retrenching to EU superhub flying and continue to pulldown the great nonstop ER expansion of 07-08.

Heck we could concieveably get A380's at that point. While I doubt we will see new 4 engine jets at DL, that or 777-300's or the large 787/350's or even 330's would take a huge bite out of pilot staffing. The ones that grab a chair when the music stops will get a little raise for the significantly bigger equipment though.

Go back and reread, because you missed the growth requirements should that tiny little upstart add flights beyond 21.

The ERs have at least another decade on them... so that's good. It is a bit concerning that putting winglets on them has ceased.

The issue that alfa neglected to address with his poor example of statistics is that we are continually diminishing widebody slots in exchange for narrowbody. Ships 624, 625, 626, 628, 629, 657, 5527, and 124 are all being returned to their lessors within the next 12 months.

Their capacity is being replaced by 717s and 737s.

As far as the V-Aussie JV, it's more of a typical thing that I expect from the union. There is room for downside for us, significant growth for the partner, and little upside for us... while removing the extreme downside.

Alfa just get *****slapped. I really don't think anyone on this forum makes more disingenuous (read: dishonest) arguments than that guy.

But he doesn't care. He's still collecting FPL today.

If he and slow are who I think they are, they won't be for much longer.

This is a GREAT question. Since the American side of the equation is the more lucrative one, why do we sign an agreement that gives another carrier 3x the access to said market instead of the other way around? Nope.. I don't get this one at all.

It will be interesting to see how much the AS feed into the 3 airports increases based on this JV....

Yeah....

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