Sailing,

Considering that the 9's represent the 100 seat market, if the 9's do get retired, what are they going to be replaced with? Basically I asking you to find out the earliest an airline can expect delivery of a brand new EMB-195 (try 50-75 of them). Or, do you think the company will just allow a gap in aircraft sizes to be between 70 seaters and 125 seaters with noting in between? While Northwest is parking many of the DC-9's, they are not retiring all of them.

To suggest a retirement of that many mainline airplanes when the company has:

- 3 billion dollars in cash,
-49% of Midwest Express,
-a narrowbody floor (per our crappy contract),
-a pilot group that feels it has given waaay to much to begin with,
-36 new RJ's for Mesaba, and
-new EMB-170's for Compass arriving every month,

is ridiculous.

In light of the above facts, for you to think that Northwest pilots would have allowed the company to park ALL the DC-9's means you don't know us very well....

New K Now

very well said!!!

Carl, Delta has more then enough RJ capacity to replace the nines over the next 3 years. They have a mix of CRJ-900's and E-170 on order. As you pointed out in your post NWA also has DC-9 replacement aircraft coming. In addition Delta has 737-700's coming that could be used in the some of the markets.
I heard all the same things you are saying from Delta pilots when the 737-200 were going away. No way Delta could do, They have to have a 100 seat aircraft ect.... They did and did it fast!!
George

The narrow body floor on your contract will be a important and critical issue. It should give some negotiating leverage to procure the replacement flying at the mainline. I understand the floor was to be set sometime around May. Has it been set and what is the floor verses your current number of aircraft. When NWA annouced the reduction down to 68 aircraft by the end of the year did that comply with the floor?

I have no dog in this hunt but I have to agree with the capt here and to spend that kind of money in this enviro is risky to say the least.
Haste makes waste so to say and as far as the 9,s are concerned they are all payed off yes ?So I figure they still save money because they have no payments on them just fuel and mx .
BTW carl how many whales do you guys own outright?
Be real crazy not to keep them after the merger especially if they are making money .
As for painting the a/c ,why not just put a small DAL logo on NWA a/c and vice versa ,pax really dont care what an a/c looks like outside so why even bother wasting the money on repainting said a/c .
Just my 3 cents .

Carl-

Who cares what these men think. None of them want to compete against a powerful airline. Heck Bethune was touting mergers just a few months ago. He represents a hedge fund that wanted a DAL/UAL deal.

Did he believe that there would be no costs or fuel would not go up?

Bethune is not a genius, I worked at CAL and had dinner with him. He is refreshing because he doesn't talk like a ceo, swears a lot, former Navy mechanic etc, but the guy running the show now, Kellner, was the brains behind the turnaround.

The DAL/NWA deal will eventually be good, Air France is a good airline and eventually may own the whole lot of us. At least if things begin to turn for the worst, not that they are not bad already, Air France may be willing to kick in a few bucks to protect the alliance.

They express fear about spending money on a merger that will create the worlds largest carrier and has very little overlap? Sounds like jealousy to me, sour grapes, etc When has a ceo had fear about spending other peoples money?

Stop listening to the analysts. If we ever fly together, we won't ask the FA's for there opinion, I know they can be very smart people too. Lets just go around the thunderstorm and get to the layover and have a cold one

Stop worrying............

God help us... French wine is overrated, and I am not a big escargot fan...

Oh, and I like shaved legs and pits

Ciao!

Unless DALPA and NWALPA discards our current scope clause, DAL won't be able to FLY any of those aircraft without increasing the narrow body fleet on the mainline side. To do anything else is a violation of our scope.

I've never pointed that out in any of my posts because NWA has not made a decision on the DC-9 replacement aircraft yet.

Carl

NWALPA would not allow NWA to be in violation of our scope clause for one single second. The membership would simply not allow it.

Carl

They don't save money, but their overall cost of operation is similar to other narrow bodies. The reason they are being parked is because they are paid off, not because they burn too much fuel. When we park the DC-9's, it's a total cost saving. If they were leased, we would still owe the lease payments which mitigates any cost savings due to their removal from service. While it is ironic that their "paid off" status makes them first on the list for parking, it also makes it a snap to return them to service at a moment's notice whenever additional capacity is needed. We've done that a number of times already.

To my knowledge, none. Every one is leased.

I didn't mean to put such emphasis on paint jobs. That is probably the smallest of the corporate integration costs. Combining headquarters and severance packages for managers are the real costs, and that is the worry. Because none of that brings additional revenue to the new company. If you're going to burn cash in this environment, it should be on assets that will bring in revenue.

Carl