So what RA said just 2 weeks ago "no main line growth for 18 months," and no new aircraft other than what was previously ordered...has changed? Good

Heh.

So apparently promises TO politicians need to be kept, eh? Too bad that's a one way street . . .

Nope, the airlines that operate them for Delta are too small to hit the level that requires reporting. Compass is not reported on NWA's data.

Based on whatever they flew.

The airlines report this data to the US Department of Transportation, the numbers are as Delta and NWA reported them. The cost is per seat.

Your analysis is incorrect if you had two airplanes there would be twice as many seats, when you divided your double costs by two, the result remains the same. (CASM * 2) / 2 = same same.

The RJ is cheaper than the DC9 to operate on a segment, trip, or seat basis. It also gives an MD88 a run for its money. Hence the economic reason why they are (and will) continue to replace the DC9 and MD88.

There are other factors that affect the decision, including performance limitations, frequency and resource saturation, but the primary driver is cost.

According to the information gold mine Bar has given us, the fuel cost per ASM for ASA and Comair is around $0.09-$0.095, Delta mainline is a little more than half that in the $0.0533 range which is, fwiw, slightly lower than AirTran's. Now, that puts DAL's overall CASM at around $.16 a mile and I'm seeing Comairs at around $.22 per mile, which is the highest of any RJ operation and nearly double that of ExpressJet and almost $.10 more than Skywest, ouch.

So, I'm going to go out on a limb and say, the CRJ-200 operated in large mass by certain DCIs is a money loser unless its on the right route but the number of those right routes are probably a small margin of the routes currently flown by the jet. I bet Delta would much rather ditch it all together and use at a minimum more CRJ700s and maybe 50 seat turboprops with probably far better CASMs. Since we don't see turboprops being ordered, then my guess is, Delta will need to figure out how it can replace more 50 seaters with 70, 2 for 1 swap, and increase how many they're allowed to use... now how would they do that?


...
I'd like to know if DAL could make money turning the CRJ-200s that might be parked into corporate jets under their Delta Elite brand (but not operation, that operation is sub par according to a lot of people I've talked to) and selling them in 20-40 hour blocks (membership cards)? Sell them just as they're currently marketed, the Challenger 850... i.e. the Challenger 604 on sterorids. They don't have range, that hurts, some could though with this center tank mod but more importantly I see corporate jets running NY-FLA, a run a 12-14 seat Challenger 850 could easily do.

The MEC was right, the RJs are good for Delta.

Did you happen to see the 744 numbers?

What difference would that make? It still would make the -9 the most expensive, not the cheapest.

Are you saying that if you have 100 pax going from point A to point B at the same time, the company would be better off sending 2 50 seats wingtip flights because the total cost for that route would be the CASM of one RJ and not 2 RJ's?

The problem with a 50 seater is that it is revenue limited. With more seats, marketing has greater flexibility in pricing to maximize revenue. Limited to only 50 seats and the options are quite limited.

If you could send 2 76 seaters for the cost of 1 100 seat DC9, then you would because thats an extra 52 seats for the same price plus you could offer flights 2 or 3 hours apart. If its 2 50-seat CRJ200s for the cost of 1 100-seat DC9 then whats the point? Their goal isn't to keep either the CRJ200 or DC9, otherwise we'd still have 732s. Their goal is to get cheaper airplanes operating in mass.

Now, the problem is if 2 76 seaters = 1 150 seater (i.e. MD88). If that happens or if it is happening, then we've got a problem because all things being equal I think the company would rather offer frequency and the pricing advantages therein rather than run a single jet. Thus the whole reason for ensuring scope is not relaxed by our pilot group and/or our union and we secure 76 seaters on our side of the fence. Or, the company will in its financial interest continue to pursue scope relaxation while at the same time moving towards the elimination of the 9 followed shortly thereafter with the MD88 and they could potentially get both.