Tongue in cheek, lads…
http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/8827/nwadeltave9.jpg
Now this looks pretty sweet.
Don’t you know? They’re going to merge the names too!
The two top candidates are Nelta and Delthwest.
j/k
I figured somebody would have beaten me to the punch, it’s a pretty obvious blend. I wonder if they’ll adopt the Airlink naming scheme for routes?
“Delta flight 3367 operated by Northwest Airlink operated by Mesaba Airlines bound for Detroit is now boarding…”
Why can’t they do an AF/KLM merger??
Which made me question…has Delta ever had 747’s…and one quick search produced this:
The amount of aviation history available at my fingertips quite possibly exceeds the amount of porn…
All I have to say, is if Delta and Northwest do merge. That will be the final nail in the coffin of the DC-9!
Northwest has 103 DC9’s in the fleet currently. That kind of capacity can’t be replaced overnight.
The DC9’s were obviously not going to last forever, but don’t expect them to go away immediately, regardless of what happens. They need to be replaced with something and that something has to be a mainline aircraft due to NW’s scope clause. Delta will need to then decide what will replace them. The 737-700 would be somewhat compatible with DL’s 737-800’s, but would be a completely new type to either airline. A319’s would work, but A320’s don’t cost much more and they aren’t compatible with DL’s fleet. The Bombardier C-Jet looks promising but it’s still 5-6 years away from production. The Sukhoi Superjet also looks promising, but I doubt the US is ready for a Russian-built airliner in domestic passenger service.
It’s a conundrum no matter what way you look at it, complicated by the fact that the 717 is out of production.
Aren’t they the samething??..at least my wife seems to think so…
I wasn’t saying right away the killing off of the DC-9, but for a fleet configuration Delta probably wouldn’t want to operate the DC-9 for very long. Heck, how long has it been since Delta had DC-9’s?
They still have them: the MD88 and MD90. Both use the same certification as the DC-9.
OK, I’ll be more specific. The DC9-30/40/50 models that Northwest does fly. Delta doesn’t fly those anymore.
A lot of people don’t know that the MD-88 and MD-90 are actually DC-9’s. In fact, many only know that the MD-80 series was developed from the DC-9 without realizing that it is a DC-9 with a different marketing name.
Does Northwest still have the baby DC-9 (DC-9-10/15)?
it won’t take them long at all to retire the dc-9. NWA was already in the process of retiring either 1/4 or 1/3 of them. With the merger they will cut capacity which would take many more offine . Delta is already flying a lot of shot hops with the 757, they will probably increase that. NWA I think is also the first American airline which is to get the dreamliner. I suppose this will free up even more 757’s and 767’s. Though I usually think that airline mergers are a horrible thing, I think that this new airline will be a fearsome thing to behold. Nice/new planes, access to so many destinations. non-stop to almost every corner of the world.
NW hasn’t had DC9-10’s since 2001 or 2002.
DL was actually the launch customer for the DC9
They need a true 90-120 seat replacement for the DC9. You can’t fly 757’s or 737-800’s on MSP-BIS, DTW-LAN, or DTW-SYR and have a hope of making money. The only RJ option they have is 50 seaters since both airlines’ pilot unions have a scope clause limiting how many large RJ’s they can have.
Delta operated 5 or 6 747s in the early 70s. The official line is that they were too big for Delta’s routes when the economy took a bad turn and Delta let them go. However, a friend who was a Delta pilot during that time (and recently retire with 38 years of service!) said there were some comments made by a senior official at Delta to the tune of “Boeing thinks this is such a great plane but our L-1011 are better…”. Who knows the real story, but that was the only time they ever had the 747.
Here is the proposed paint scheme. I don’t know about the credibility of this source however.
No credibility.
They’ll fly them in nwa and Delta liveries until the nwa planes go in for repaint to become full Delta or they are replaced. If Delta’s not going to give up their name, they’re sure as shootin’ not going to give up their branding(which they just revised).