Originally Posted by ATOBTTR

I think what's also missed is that this 767-400 on ATL-MCO will not even be daily. In October when it's operating, it's on Friday's and Saturday's, at least for dates I looked, which are also when MCO-GRU/GRU-MCO don't operate (MCO-GRU doesn't operate on Friday night & GRU-MCO doesn't operate on Saturday night, based on my quick searches). This indicates this 767-400 on ATL-MCO/MCO-ATL is less about putting a widebody to MCO from ATL and more likely about facilitating aircraft rotation and getting the 767-400 that are otherwise isolated to the MCO-GRU/GRU-MCO route back to ATL to rotate elsewhere through the system, as ATL-GRU, DTW-GRU, and JFK-GRU are being operated with A330s (at least at that time of year), so it doesn't give DL the option to rotate the 767-400s on MCO-GRU/GRU-MCO elsewhere through system by sending it to another city from GRU after arriving from MCO (i.e. they can't send it to operate ATL-GRU-MCO-GRU-ATL or something similar).


As noted above, probably aircraft rotation to get the 767-400s isolated from the rest of the DL system on MCO-GRU/GRU-MCO back to ATL to facilitate rotation elsewhere. Right now, at least for Saturday, 5 August, both MCO-GRU and JFK-GRU are operated with 767-300s, allowing DL to put the aircraft on a rotation like JFK-GRU-MCO-GRU-JFK, thus putting it back in the rest of the system at JFK upon its return, which is why DL wouldn't need to send the 767 anywhere from MCO to get it back into the system. They can send it back to GRU, then back to JFK.

Based on digging into the data, that would be my best hypothesis on the bigger picture and why DL is putting the 767-400 on ATL-MCO/MCO-ATL.