We hold a large number of 777 delivery positions. It was 50 at one point but many confirmation dates have passed. I think we still hold 20 to 25 positions.

Looks like that 717 won't be going too junior after all. 82 senior to upper 6900 seniority. Figure it's the junior m88A and lots of DC9 folks. My 9500 bud is gonna owe me a beer I think.

Why do I get the feeling that if we finally hear the 747 rumor to be true it will be around 2015 or so and contingent on us signing another expedited subpar contract:-0

I'm not disagreeing with you. I actually agree with you. But in his particular situation, he committed himself by looking. I'm with you though. Don't look at all, and you won't be put in his situation to begin with.

Nothing is junior. I think for As there will be nothing junior about the airplane while Bs will find a lot more senior than anyone thought and then junior at the bottom of the list.

Get a friend to look.

I disagree completely. He didn't acknowledge anything. Until the assignment is acknowledged it does not exist. I look at my schedule all the time on reserve and I never acknowledge anything unless its on my last off day or to my advantage. If they don't call me, I'm staying home, and I'll be fully within my contractual rights to do so. To each his own though. It's probably not worth arguing about.

Sailing,

Why do you say Alaska has a better inflight product than we do?

How do you know Boeing won't cover the maintenance cost?

....or contingent on us waiving our JV non-compliance grievances. :eek:

I don't know, I have a feeling the backlog is real and the price is high (relative term) and not going down soon. Boeing Says 777 Backlog Damps Sales as Airlines Shun Wait - Bloomberg

And do we even know if we can cut in line for the 77W? I heard one reason SWA acquired AirTran was for 738 slots and the 717 deal also included us sending 738 slots over to SWA. I inquired with the person explaining this as to why SWA with its purchasing power would have to struggle to get 738 slots and it was explained SWA may own 700 slots but that doesn't carry over to the 800. Not sure.

But what about the time value of money? 744s could be here sooner making money sooner that we bank sooner and maybe pay down debt sooner and so on.

Sure the 77W would beat it in cargo but what if cargo doesn't run at full capacity and top dollar 100% of the time? That gives the cheaper 744 acquisition an even larger margin that I bet beats any maintenance cost difference that I still think can be negotiated. I saw Embraer personally do that on a corporate jet, I bet Boeing can do it.

But I see this 744 vs 77W a lot like the MD90 vs 738. We tripped over ourselves to acquire as many 90s as we could because they were 4x cheaper. And that's with both jets seating 160 passengers. The 744 seats even more passengers than the 77W and could be 4x cheaper. Anecdotal evidence that the acquisition price is huge and trumps a lot of things.

The problem I think is getting 744s. If this was such a good deal why didn't we get more 744s before? Probably because getting "late model" ones is hard to do, however, with the 748 sales the way they are I bet Boeing can do deals like it did with SQ to help move customers into the 748 and in doing so they'd love or are desperate for us to help out and buy the trade-in 744s.

Put it all together and look at Carl's post and other headlines like the SQ deal and it looks to me like this could be plausible. And sure the 77W would knock the 744 out in 6 rounds if the subject was only costs and acquisition cost wasn't a factor. But given that these jets are not free and given it's not about cost but revenue, maybe the 744 knocks the 77W out in 5 rounds. And that's with the 77W not showing up til round 3.