I think the days of the domestic 76 are numbered. They will just make the -ER guys do it. (Just like CVG, now LAX, and with NW DTW & MSP)

While I can understand your view, I think you are wrong & here is why. DAL wants to be a Premier Global Airline & the Premium Airline in NY. RA & EB know darn well that if they want to compete with JetBlue & such they will NOT win people over with 50 seat RJs. Why? Because the public doesn't like them, & DAL is shifting back to a 2 class product. Management is steering away from the 50 seater, & they won't win NY with them. We will see more Mainline Flying out of LGA.

I agree totally. There's no way to compete with a 50 seat RJ against JetBlue. But at least JetBlue has West coast feed and a large JFK hub to justify an Airbus to those smaller cities. Our LGA hub will still be much smaller than JB @ JFK, AND we have a 1500 nm restriction (at least for now). That severely limits our feed there, in my opinion. Again, I hope I'm wrong (wouldn't be the first time:p ) but I'm not getting too excited yet.

I felt they were going that way too, and I hope that continues, you're right. Time will tell indeed. If not 50's, maybe 70 or 76 seaters??

Did anyone else notice the end of the release where it also stated we gave LCC some route authority to Brazil and Japan. It also stated customers will not see any material change in services to those countries. Anyone have any idea what these authorities are? I thought we gave FedEx our unused Japan authorities (along with some MD-11's and older 757's). Disclaimer:looking at a DAL-S history. Honestly not sure if DAL-N was not operating any of their authorities. Anyone? Anyone? Something-D-O-O economics?:D Overall, I think this is a big positive for Delta and may be a small positive for pilots. Not so good for LCC. New York City is 24/7. DC not so much.
Burn Notice

With us running a majority of the operations out of LGA I'd think we'd also be able to better time arrivals/departures a la ATL.[/quote]


That was a big part of this move as well. They will also be able to coordinate better with the traffic out of JFK to minimize problems at both airports.

My bet is 76 seaters, Buses and Douglas equipment and not 50 seaters. The point is to maximize the slot and I don't think they have a problem reducing frequency to some locations and increasing the size of the jets to preserve the bang for the buck with these slots. Less service to Albany more service to Florida. Otherwise keep Piedmont's Dash 8-300s and just repaint them.

As to New York City, you've got CAL running a big operation out of EWR that is both domestic and international. We have some domestic and a lot of international out of JFK and domestic in LGA. Jetblue only domestic out of JFK. IMHO, the right way to handle this is to ramp up LGA and somehow market both JFK and LGA together. JFK primarily for international, LGA primarily for domestic but the key is we offer both and although its not all in one central place like CAL, its at least in LGA which is much more centralized for NY. And in a funny way, one of the downsides to EWR for CAL is the mixing. We used to do 4+ hour taxis at EWR just to get to the darn de-ice pads because 1 777 or 764 would take up almost all of the slots, meanwhile all of the other airlines were pushing off and getting deiced and blasting off. It's probably best to seperate them by... 12.0 miles if you travel by car. Thats really unique if you think about it.

And for customers it means no more picking from one of the multitude of LGA carriers providing their token service and their substandard terminals and ontime performance, now you get the big carrier that is trying to run the place. Maybe for corporate contracts our size, our commitment and our international service will become rather attractive.

My thought is that they ought to have a bus bridge between the two airports like Continental did with Allentown to EWR. You actually went through TSA in Allentown, went to a gate, boarded a bus and that drove you onto the ramp in EWR and to a real gate and you went on to your plane. It can be done. There should be gate to gate buses for Delta passengers between the two airports.
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Is there still a rumor out there about us switching terminals in JFK alltogether? Someone mentioned AA's terminal.

And of the NWA equipment, my bet (and I'm just playing around here) is a Airbus base before a 9 base. I think the 9s are going to be in or flying through ATL soon and thus wrapped up with their current DAL-N and ATL flying and thus not able to just add a DC9 base. But thats a totally baseless assumption... as opposed to everything else I write which is just baseless assumptions made up of all of the accurate assumptions made here.

Delta Air Lines is not interested in paying for this 40 million dollar renovation just so Comair, ASA, and all the other DCI carriers can come play in LGA. While it still has a limited purpose the 50 seat RJ is dead at Delta. Besides, most of you are assuming that Delta will continue service to all the places that Express was going. If the potential for yield is not there then nothing could be further from the truth. The mainline clause is for valid reasons. With all the stink about Colgan, and now the Rochester incident it would be political suicide to believe we would have a chance of getting government approval for this if Delta stated they would be using Regional Jets. Sorry guys but the Regional jet stigma is like leprocy of old.

Then why is every flight between RDU and LGA/JFK on an RJ, and all but few on a 50-seater?

I think this is good news but not great news. As others have stated, I don't see us replacing Dashes with MD88s. The "larger" airplanes are going to be mostly RJs, I think. But that's not all bad. Instead of growing the RJ fleet, I think (hope) that they are just going to move the planes around. That would mean seeing less RJs in ATL, for example, with RJ routes there being replaced by mainline equipment. This is just my guess. Whatever happens, it will be interesting.

Now, if they remove the 1500 NM restriction, then all bets are off.

We would love to have AA's terminal, but they aren't budging.....yet. THey are actively courting several international airlines to come in and use their space (lots of it unused) and let them work the flights underwing. We are actively pursuing Terminal 4. But they don't want to sell out. We don't want to build because it is just too expensive and right now noone is willing to lend money for it. Also, remember AA's terminal was 18 years in the works from dealing with Port Authority, environmentalists, bankers and trying to build their presence to justify the expenditure. It would be far easier to go into an existing structure (that was built with large jets in mind) and update the interior infrastructure to our IT needs, passenger experience, etc. Noone wants to budge....yet.