Originally Posted by
J.Edward
doobierw -- do you know if CO's still planning on phasing out these guys by this year? (Seem to recall that they were but amidst my cramming diligent studying for CPA-dom, I can't seem to recall what the plan was.
The fleet plan (at least the 'public' version) is here:
http://www.continental.com/web/en-US...2101.pdf#fleet
Looks like we'll have 4 aircraft left on 12/31. We've heard that the last -300s go away at the end of December. I would suspect that they fly until 12/31, and then they exit the fleet in the remaining week or so. From an accounting perspective then, they are around until Q1 of 10. From a passenger perspective they are around until about the last day of Q4 of 09.
Certainly it's possible they might fly a flight here and there until the holiday crush is over, but everything we've heard is that they are gone at the end of December.
I'm not sure if these planes are going to the desert or not. I know when they exit the system they are being ferried to ARG, which is Walnut Ridge, Arkansas. Had heard someone mention that some of our exiting aircraft were being parted out, because the sum of the parts is more than the sum of the whole...... So they might be parting them out. Not sure what/where the firm up in ARG is doing with them after we fly them up there.
Pilots won't miss them at all. Can't wait until the last one is adios'd.
DRW