Who is spreading the AUS-LAX 717 rumor, Bill Lundberg? I don't see it in Travelnet and it isn't on airlineroute.net.

I don't believe it.

Yes please....

Exactly Sinkr8..I remember AA trying to dump the 717 after buying TWA. The planes sat around for about a yr until AT picked them up to replace the Valuejet DC9's that we game them 5 yrs earlier. In fact, I think the new 717's were marketed to erase the public's image of Valuejet after their mishap in the Everglades. Now, 15 yrs later, they're finally headed to DL.

I do like the idea of SWA having to pay for bringing into the fleet so we can use them out of DAL..

We never gave any nines to value jet. We traded nines to McD as part or a MD88 purchase. They were then parked in the desert. Value Jet purchased or leased them from McD. The fact some of them were former Delta had no real bearing on starting Value Jet. Lots of airframes available at the time. We could have pushed them off a cliff and all we would have done is lose money. Value Jet would have been flying with or without them.

Sailing;
There is romance in the DAL planes being flown by ValuJet. Greeks value romance. You should be proud to be Greek.:D

I stand corrected. My point was more about not taking the 717's 15 yrs ago as a hedge against AT to make them buy bigger, more expensive 737's or smaller, less capable RJ's. Instead, they had a modern, efficient, mainline 100 seater to fly against our 73-200's 10 times a day to MCO and TPA.

I still don't see the connection. AirTran was the launch customer for the 717. If we had purchased them Boeing would have made more or AirTran might have bought the E190. Airframes are always available.

I seem to remember something about hush kits. Govt wouldn't give us a waiver to continue using them without them, made their value pretty close to scrap aluminum. Then they gave Valujet the waiver.

Anybody else remember the not-so-level playing field?

The E-175 didn't fly until 2002 and the E-190 wasn't available until 2004. Without the 717's, AirTran would have had to keep flying older DC9's at the same fuel efficiency as the 73-200 for at least 5 more years, or buy smaller CRJ7/9's that would have made them more on par with ASA than mainline Delta. The 717 with new first class seats gave AT a new, more fuel efficient, viable product to offer as an alternative to DL pax after 9/11, since all legacy's were dinosaurs headed to extinction. As they made money and all the legacy's downsized on their way to BK, AT had a wet lease agreement with Ryan's 73/320's until they could get their own 73-700's to expand their network, buy/merge with Midwest (who also had 717's) and become enough of a threat to LUV that SWA decided to buy them. I don't think there were any other airframes available in 99-2005 that fit their needs as well as the cheap, used, former TWA 717's sitting on the ramp. I can't remember when MD/Boeing stopped production, but if DL had grabbed the TWA 717's, I think it would have slowed down AT's growth in the 2000's.

Just my opinion, but without the 717, AirTran would not have been success that they were. If we had bought the 717 as the 727/737's were retired, we would have had a mainline 100 seater for the last decade and fewer CRJ 7/9's...and you know how that worked out.

NW had no trouble hush kitting theirs. I would put that up there with the internet legend about JetBlue getting free aircraft from Airbus for 3 years.