If you park a leased airplane, wouldn't you still have to pay for it? The MD88s are leased, and even though it is for less than pre-BK, it is a liability. Your DC9s are fully owned. They can be parked and nothing is still owed to anyone.
As far as "big time shrinkage" for Delta, well, we have already gone through that period, and now we are "bare boned." We have had to throw unprofitable RJs on routes because we don't have the mainline planes to do new ones. All of those 737-200s, 737-300s, 767-200s, and MD11s left after 9-11. How about you guys? Have you had that "Spring cleaning" yet? You are now starting to do that with some DC9s. Yes, you got rid of DC10s (just like we got rid of L1011s) also. I have a feeling that you are going to get cleaned more than we will. You have a lot of planes that are more affected by high oil. That doesn't mean we won't lose some planes, but I would think we would lose more RJs than mainline planes. And, those MD90s are out there, and we have trained CVG MD88 crews for that purpose. They could be delayed a bit, maybe until next Spring I would guess.
Bye Bye--General Lee