Yes. In my opinion it would be a unanimous vote to follow the same course.

 

The thing about the 717 vs the 190. The 717 is a DC9-30, not much question of where they belong. The C-Series I think is the same.

But the E190? Seems to me there will be a question. I could see DAL walking over to DALPA and saying ... "we need to talk..."

Now I don't have a doubt that DALPA will say no. Honestly believe that. But what if some of our own start to call DALPA, "well, what are the offering?"

I think if no 717s, then the possibility of E190s next year does not give me the warm and fuzzies although I believe they will either be here or they won't be anywhere. But for all the economies of scale a 737-700, a stretched 800 version or a strong arm stretch 900 version offer, I've got to believe the E190 does the same with the E175s but not if they're split between airlines.

All of this doesn't take into consideration that the 717 seating 117 is cheaper than the 100 seat E190. Possibly, half as much?

 

If you look at RA's history with refurbing the DC9's - absolutely. They would do handsomely for 5-10 yrs until the true next gen NB is on line.

Problem is you would need more than the 25 odd AT has to make that a viable fleet

 

I think 2 things are a given:

1) The company will ask - it's their job. Expect it to come gift wrapped in something that will appeal to the weak minded, selfish, and naive.

2) There will be a percentage of the pilot group as mentioned above who will bite. Not enough to matter, but enough to burn up a few keyboards

 

What makes you think they view the DALPA as a devil they know?

I also think the threat of the "other guys" are good for our MEC much as the threat of a F/A union caused management to sweeten the pot for the F/A's so there wasn't one.

 

I agree.

The one thing we kind of having going for us and I hope I'm right about this. But I count the average age of our pilots at 50.5, maybe the median being around 51.5.

This will not be their last contract. Even if they plan to go out by 60 they've got most likely 2 contracts to go. More if they want to go to 65.

Of course, if some think they can get a big win and then fly til the contract is over and cash out, then yes we've got a problem with those who are willing to deal away any Delta flying.

The other thing- if you give RAH E190s for Delta, you're just funding Frontier and whatever else RAH dreams up. Same with Skywest Holdings and same with TSA Holdings. We're growing a problem.

There was a time you competed against other airlines but some how we've morphed this industry to where you don't compete with others. You leave their territory alone and they'll leave you alone too to the point it looks like one airline pulls out of RDU/BNA and the other in kind pulls out of DFW. Tin foil hat is on.

In the meantime, you make your employees compete for their own work. Competition is not based on growth but from reducing costs by competing from within.

 

From APC:

AirTran Fleet:

717: 88
737-700: 52

 

RFP Idea.

Best non-717 RFP order? MD-88s.

What if, we took over the 4th floor, and had the goals of:

• mainline scope recapture,
• capacity neutral and
• frequency neutral.

I think you get that if you go back to point-to-point-to-hub flying.

You could use 1 88 to offer 74ish seats to two cities on 1 plane, using 1 gate and 1 "slot".

Looking at GSO and GSP to ATL, you've got 10 flights each or 20 flights total and 1769 seats a day in one direction between those two cities and ATL.

GSP has 777 and GSP and 992 to GSO. Flights are on a mix of CRJ200s, 700s and 900s and DC95s and 88s.

Options:

1. Do all MD88 direct flights with the same frequencies gives you'd 1200 more seats in the market then you want, not an option.
2. You could reduce frequency out of GSP to 5 and GSO to 7 to keep seat inventory the same, but that's a frequency reduction.
3. OR, fly GSO-GSP-ATL on an 88.

If you did that 10 times a day you'd come up a little short in seat inventory so offer 8 GSO-GSP-ATL flights and 2 direct flights from each city and you are frequency and capacity neutral and all mainline.

A 717, btw, on direct flights would result in only a minor reduction in frequency for the same capacity.

 

I agree and I can see us getting the 717's then acquiring Hawaiian. As a result those would come to the mainland and a 170/175/190 type would be flown intra island.

All guessing of course.

 

Frankly, if those are your goals, the fourth floor is not where you need to be. You probably need to work a little higher up than that.