There is no NW now.

According to the belief of some DL folks, there never has been an NW. Doubleplusungood.

DC9s
 

Anyone who is going to miss flying on a 40 year old DC9 is just being nostalgic. DL has a significantly more modern fleet and if they are smart they will scrap those DC9-30/40/50s as soon as possible. You only think they are nice because they refurbished them. It's still a 40 year old metal skin and wing that you are flying on. Let go and Let Delta!

Let Continental! Let Southwest!

Paid-for Niners still make sense on some routes with a lot of dead time between turns. But everytime fuel prices spike upwards (as is happening now) more and more will make the transition to beer cans.

yea... whatever... Please go and review the fleet statistics for both DL and NW and tell me how many MD-80/90's DL is still flying compared to the number of D-9's NW is flying... mmm reality check! ... For me, sitting in an older D-9 in F beats a barbie jet any day of the week

Just curious, what other bottom line is there?

No profit, no airlines. They will try to be competitive and that means changing aircrafts to do so. No one should take any of this as a personal offense.

NW flyers need to mature up a bit right now I think.

If the April traffic figures are any indications, the airlines that provide the best alternatives to DL (i.e. CO & WN) are also the industry leaders.

What NW flyers most need to do (and many are doing just that!) is to make a rational evaluation of their options.

I completely agree. They're especially nice doing the short hops ord-dtw.

Me also. You get overhead luggage space

With many segments and many hours on -9's, have to say they are getting OLD. The refurbishment stuff went old too -- now they don't even seem to have seat parts to fix them up and keep them flying.

Very nice on the short hops -- the E175 is a nice substitute. Just get rid of those CRJ200 barbie jets -- avoid them at all cost. The CRJ900 is OK, but nowhere close to the DC9 or the E175!

Seriously, without the FAA lifting the 100,000 cycle end-of life after 9/11, all of the -9's would be gone already.

Neither CO or WN serve me locally. Lots of us have a very limited choice of airline. I would rather fly without FC than drive 1-2 hours (in my case).

Ditto - just got downgraded from DC 9's to CRJ's on my trip to YYZ. No FC, no pre-flight drink, no overhead storage, wait for luggage at destination. :mad:

DL has been doing this over the southeast for years.

At my home airport, MLB 3 years ago we had 6+ M88's + at least one 737. Now we're down to 1 M88 and 3 RJ's. Flightsalmost always go out full with significant full fare traffic (gov't).

I guess they decided that the revenue wasn't there and that they could funnel us to larger airports (MCO) where they could have hourly service on smaller planes (757's only) than in the past (in the summer is was almost always 767's).

Source? NW refurbed the DC-9's in the mid-90's when they had 65,000 - 70,000 cycles with the idea of retiring them at 100,000 cycles in roughly 2010. They have stated that a major investment is needed to go beyond 104,000 cycles. Douglas actually tested a DC-9 to 208,000 cycles. Do you have a source for the FAA reg or that any have gone past 100,000 cycles? They have stated they want to keep the DC9-50's around awhile longer, but those are newer and not likely close to 100,000 cycles yet. Here is my source.

I'm not in love with the DC9 and being nostalgic, I'm not in love with a tiny regional jet. If you're going to take the DC9 out of service, replace it with a CR9, ERJ-175, ERJ-190 or similar, with some room, and a F cabin. Delta's replacement plan for the DC9 is inferior to NW's original plan.

And dont forget no WorldClub access in DTW :mad:

I ve been downgraded too, last thing I wanna do after flying CPT-JFK-DTW in C/F is to have my last flight of the journey to YYZ on a crappy CRJ!