Enough to pay for a couple of airbuses.

The Airbus was clearly the best choice for fleet commonality, but I agree the A220 would have been a great addition at the lower end of the seating range. It is such a versatile airplane with a very low CASM.

Any idea on how many A319 NEOs have been ordered?

The MOU is written such that NK has the flexibility to adjust its order up or down from A220 to 321LXR. In fact, NK will be taking more leases early on to see how the market will shape the aircraft order to meet the demands of the future.

Where did you hear this?


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That’s not quite what was said. Their intent is to operate an A320 fleet type. While they do have the option to dial it back to a 220, that is not their goal, based on the conference call.

Exactly correct

Someone asked if they have flexibility to move to other Airbus types. The CFO said yes they do BUT they are interested in the 320 family and operating the 320 family. When asked about the 220, they said the 319 was selected to help serve as the smaller aircraft.

The answer was such a brush off like “sure, yeah....maybe....but won’t happen”

220s aren’t coming and I doubt anything but 320s were ever truly considered

Congrats for the order...
Honest question: how could a big aircraft order affect potential merger/buyout talks?

If I recall correctly, consolidation was brought up, but for the life of me I can’t remember the gist of the answer.

They asked management

“We are not asking about consolidation directly, that's not really the issue. But with the new aircraft contract, did you build any, I don't know, deliberate contract flexibility into that as part of the order? Should you end up participating in M&A at any point during the delivery stream?”

Answer

Hey, Jamie, it's Ed. So we were pretty thoughtful throughout the course of this order for a variety of things. And as Scott mentioned in his comments, flexibility was a component of our fleet desires going forward and that flexibility went up or down within gauge, and we built a balance sheet to enhance that by the way. So we're very excited about the growth prospects. We feel good about the setup. We have the desired fleet flexibility to move within gauge to get more airplanes that we want, to retire aircraft, to sell aircraft. We have flexibility within the contract as well. So I would say, broadly speaking, I think, we're in a good spot.

Yes. I didn’t imply that 220’s are on tap. I said that the MOU provides the flexibility to adjust the order from anything from the 220 to 321 derivatives. And that is exactly correct.