At the time of this post (4:30 PM EST on Monday Feb 16) there are currently 403 aircraft in the skies in the service of Delta. Statistics courtesy of Flight Explorer. Of the 403, 170 are regional jets.

This means that about 42 percent of the available lift is on this kind of equipment.

I'll tell you what 3 million miles has taught me about these things. It's not the cramped space but the third parties that fly them.

None of these people (and I'll name names, Comair, ASA, SkyWest, Chataqua, and Atlantic Coast) seem to take owership of delays or seem to respect that many of us here have flown Delta metal for years.

I strongly resent that these third parties have been handed the business out of Knoxville and they did not have to compete for it.

With that in mind, I leave now for two RJs tonight to CVG and on to MSN. I don't mind them on routes like this.

But there is too much dependence on third parties.

Everybody take good care

Jerry

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"Burnin' out his fuse up here alone"