Originally Posted by
bgriff
Delta doesn't have a choice, short of Ch 11, to stop paying the financing payments for newer aircraft, so they might as well run newer aircraft that are more fuel efficient and have lower maintenance costs and park the older ones (this is offset somewhat by the fact that most of their newer aircraft are also bigger, but I imagine it still works out in favor of the newer aircraft). In the short term the ownership cost of their fleet is a fixed cost, but the cost incurred by operating each flight is up to the choice of which aircraft stay in the air.
It doesn't work like that. NWA returned a lot of newer aircraft in bankruptcy and kept the DC-9's that were paid for flying. Delta will burn through cash very quickly at this point. It's not a good situation at all and I would not be surprised to see another bankruptcy. Delta can bring back MD-88's and -90's from storage and return newer aircraft and reject any new orders.