Originally Posted by
pbarnette
Let's play a game of "What's More Likely"!
What's more likely:
1) The CEO of a major airline, possibly the most admired executive in the industry is "uninformed" or "inconsistent"; or
2) Jens Flottau, some nobody journalist, whose article reads like it was written by a 7th grader at the East Sandusky Jr High Monthly Gazette, is simply doing an awful job of conveying something that he probably didn't fully understand in the first place.
2 is entirely likely, if not probable, but I think you're misunderstanding my point about RA's comments. I don't think RA is uninformed (someone else said that), but he's not consistent. Discarding the 777X from consideration because it's "experimental" but then including the A350-10 (a paper airplane derived from a plane that only recently flew) and the A330NEO (a plane that doesn't even exist outside of informal discussions and magazine articles) is inconsistent. Saying you want a plane with a certain mission profile, and then only considering planes that are larger and fly further while discounting the one plane that actually fits the mission profile (and would probably be really cheap and is most definitely not "experimental" - right up Delta's alley) is not consistent. Issuing an RFP which includes 2 paper airplanes (A350-1000 and 787-10) and one phantom airplane (A330NEO), and which includes 5 airplanes which would fall under the category of "new" (A350-900/-1000 and 787-8/-9/-10), when your airline never buys "new" planes, is inconsistent. Lamenting that the 757 was never really replaced after it was ended in 2003 is inconsistent with what all the airlines were doing - replacing the 757 with 737 and A320 models (admittedly under different industry/economic situation). Boeing has supposedly considered a 757 replacement, and would probably go forward if a certain airline who operates the most 757-200s would come forward and be a launch customer with a 100-plane order - except Delta never buys "new" planes.
The MAX9 and 321NEO have a fairly similar profile to the 752 but I don't see Delta's name in the order book for either. As I said in a previous post, until Delta is willing to get in early on new planes with large orders, they're not going to have any say in what Airbus and Boeing make.