Originally Posted by
eponymous_coward
Sure. But how does that contradict what I said (which was specifically oriented to TATL but I'll generalize it)?
Given that US airlines have scads of them in their fleets, AND that new planes are expensive, why wouldn't they use what's in their fleet, even if it's overkill for transcon/midcon?
Also, can someone explain to me if there's such a huge market demand for a 757 analogue, why did the 757 production line get shut down? Consider that the 737NG comes from an OLDER plane lineage... one would think that if there was massive pent-up demand for this type of plane, we'd be seeing a 757NG, right?
However, let's look at the timeline:
1993: 737NG begins development
1998: 737NG enters service (73G, 73H)
2001: 739 enters service (first 737 close to 757 pax capacity)
2002-2003: a grand total of SEVEN 757s are ordered, Boeing shuts down production line
Seems pretty clear to me what happened. And before someone says "9/11"- 767/777 orders went down, but they didn't crash anywhere near that hard. And 737 orders went down quite a bit, but stayed well above what airlines were buying pre-737NG announcement.
Do you think AS should be doing what G4 is doing- buying cheapo used 757s instead of new 738s?
The problem is that Boeing built the 757 with just a tiny bit (10%) too little range. It was built to fly NY-LA, and LA-Hawaii; not NY-London. Only recently, has the addition of winglets to a lot of the existing fleet has it become a viable trans-atlantic aircraft, and really the perfect aircraft to fly from a big hub to a smaller city. JFK-BRU, JFK-BHX or BDL-LHR; things like that. I think a new 757-300, with 757-200WL range would be a big seller
AS doesn't really like older planes, unlike G4. They'll stick with what they've got for the forseeable future (although I can see dropping the 700s, and replacing them with a smaller jet such as C300? for routes like SEA-LGB, PDX-OAK etc etc
The question is do they go to QX or AS..