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.

 

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.

 

The only "hush kitting" NWA did was restricting us from using flaps 40(45?)

 

Reports on Northwest Airlines's installation of hushkits on 40 Douglas DC-9-30 transports in November 1994. Contract with Pratt & Whitney and ABS Partnership to purchase the initial hushkits; Conversion of 90 transports to the ABS system; Hushkit features and capabilities.

Summary of av week article.

 

Man you guys sure know your history. Yes there is some back and forth on exact data, but when isn't there in any history...
Anyways, I've learned a lot in the last 30 pages or so.

Now, how/where are guys like George constantly finding out about new routes, new 717 routes, etc? What strange bathroom reading material are they looking at that gives them the inside scoop on this stuff? I ask, because it is becoming apparent that with 3 or 4 717s arriving a month, there WILL have to be a LOT of new routes getting covered by 717s, and my hopes are starting to get raised again. I'd like to keep up on where the miniDog is going...