Originally Posted by iaflyer

The MD90s do add a twist, but I guess I was looking at the fact that Delta didn't have anything smaller than the MD88 prior to the merger. The DC9s are good because they are paid for, and can be parked if fuel goes up again. I don't know what the going rate for a 717. Two CR9s can serve a market better than a single DC9, the frequency attracts business travelers. A leisure traveler doesn't usually care how often a flight goes, as long as it gets there and the fare is cheap. The business traveler wants the frequency, so I think it would be more attractive to network. The 2 CR9s might be cheaper than a single DC9. However, the company can't add many (or any, not sure, paging ACL...) more CR9s because of scope. They can add any number of mainline aircraft.

Maybe - now that we have another simulator, it makes it easier to have more A330s. Yes, Boeing does owe us money, but everyone here seems to think it's a lot of money. I doubt it's more than $100 million, max. That might be the price of half a new 330. Second, Boeing is more likely to give us a deal on 777s than the competitor's airplanes.

2%-3% growth rate at Delta might mean 240-360 new hires. Now, that means actually nothing, because the 2-3% growth for 2011 is total airline capacity. It includes parking CRJs and adding mainline, so we may have to have more bodies. Also, from what they said last year, they have hired for 2011, any hiring next year is for 2012, which they haven't talked about growth. Finally, as SD says, they staff for block hours, which doesn't directly connect to airline capacity.

I'm all for new hires, so I won't say we won't hire that amount, I'm just saying that who knows. Retirements aren't required yet, and we are seeing big majority of pilots stay past 60.

Originally Posted by DAL4EVER

As far as staffing I agree with you. To early to tell right now. Retirements aren't happening like many thought they would. Here's hoping that North Korea doesn't screw things up for 2011.

Originally Posted by acl65pilot

FtB;
That is the logic used on the MD-90 so it makes a ton of sense to me. The only issue with the 717 is those darn engines.

Originally Posted by acl65pilot

Bill I like your dots. A buddy of mine that works over in the LUV corporate offices seems to think that they will want to do away with their 717's as well. The Click Jets are up to 25 total, so that would be a nice add on to these. If we pull the trigger great, I just like the fact that we are looking at airplanes.

As for the WB jets, we need em. They just pulled DTW and MSP to HNL because they do not have enough WB jets to fly what they want flown, so if we can get some cheap we will get em. I know Jet Star had three 777-200LR's they were shedding too. Emirates is shedding a bunch of their jets as they take delivery of new ones as well. There are a few white tail 744's, 330's, 320's on the used market as well. There are a bunch of 320's with 20K-55K hr on them that are for sale at 6-12 million a copy too. All of those would be great additions to our fleet. I figure we look at all of them.

On your hiring number, that seems to be the constant rumor, but it needed board approval before they hit the execute button.

Originally Posted by DAL4EVER

Had an Air Tran J/S tell me the 717 engines are sometimes having TBO's as low as 1500-2000 hours. If true, that's painful! Even though we do On-Condition, our adjusted TBO on our engines is somewhere between 10000-20000 hours.