Gentlemen,

Take this with someone with experience in the matter:

Anytime you have DC-9's getting parked and the 70 seaters replacing them are being flown by someone else, it is very bad for future SLI negotiations. Especially, when your merger partner is expanding, while you are being told the company is trying to make a profit.

Even if they can somehow get a bunch of MD90's and make this a wash.....


From the Alaska Airlines Quick Take:

We need to get (back) that 70 seat flying.

Maybe Compass pilots need to be brought over, right now.

Again, watch their words. The "50" seat RJ is dead. The 70/76 seat jets have six to nine years left in them which is exactly when these ASA's expire. DAL is writing shorter term contracts and all of them are set to expire in 2020 or earlier.
The easy answer is hold the line on scope and when the next gen 100 seat jet actually makes it in to the air with CASM numbers that they tout, the small jet issue will again take care of itself.

As you say it is about the Benjamins. This holds true for pilots too, sadly. If it continues to be the will of the pilots to vote pay over scope maintenance, then we get what we deserve.

BINGO!! We are the LAST line of defense AGAINST further scope degradation. Read the ENTIRE TA before you check a box. If we fail to hold the line then it's our fault. Period.

Interesting take and I'm all for that.

CPSC. I called them with a minor jumpseat issue (VRU wouldn't let me list for it since it was past departure time, but the flight was delayed), they hooked me up with the JS in seconds.

I'd explain that you were holding with scheduling for 20 minutes, but departure time is approaching...

Again, the CPSC is very helpful.

Not gonna happen now that Compass is owned by Trans States.

From my interactions I've gotten the impression that "everything is under control, nothing to see here, move along"
The sad thing is that until you recognize a flaw, it's pretty darn hard to fix it...

Our Section 1 isn't all bad, in fact the AF JV scope language is tight, reviewed annually and subject to remedies if the balance of flying goes more than 3% in favor of one group.

Why that model wasn't used for RJ or AS scope is a mystery, maybe the negotiators saw only the upside for the intl. and looked past the corresponding impact on domestic...

Cheers
George

Will there be a transcript of this conference posted anywhere? How long is the audio of the Delta portion?

I brought up that point with RD (JV guy) and he said that since AS doesn't have widebodies, the SLI wouldn't be impacted by that.

My take on the subject is: everybody on the DAL NB fleet will be impacted by AS growing if the DAL NB count remains mostly flat...

Cheers
George

OK, I'm listening to the webcast. Here are the cuts I'm hearing Ed talk about:

1) The remaining DC-9's, all -50's (about 35), to be retired in 12-28 months,
2) The remaining Saab 340's (26), retired this year,
3) 60 CRJ 50-seaters to be retired in 12-18 months.

Ed doesn't talk about MD-90's right away. He says (technically correct) that we have "no order book". I think he's saying no orders with the manufacturers. Capacity for the full year is being looked at, probably will end up being at the low end of the previously announced range: up 1%. Q1 will be up 3%, vs. previously announced up 5%.

It's really hard to tell how our overall capacity will be affected by listening to the webcast, which I guess is the point.

You get some idea on replacaments/additions (other than through the RFP, which will be addressed much later in the year) from the Q&A: replacements will be the ERJ-170's just announced (8), and a "handful" of 70-76 seat airplanes, for a total of 10-20, and (20) MD-90's from the used market.

Based on the webcast, I guess that takes capacity down by 15 mainline airframes, down 40 RJ's (60 leave, 20 come in), and down 26 Saabs in the next 12-18-months.

There is no timeframe given for aircraft coming in, or if 20 MD's is all there is, and no mention of some airframes we've been told were coming out of the desert previously. This is also short of the 49 MD-90's previously mentioned (Bastian mentions 20, and we already have 19, so he's only mentioning 39).

Depending on how positive you want to be, and depending on how many of these mystical MD-90's you want to count, and the 2 ER's and several 757's coming out of the desert, it all varies between a slight positve, to as much as minus fifteen airframes. That's all I could figure out.