Delta retires the 777 today

Kritchlow said:
You have not actually touched a Delta airplane (or sim) yet, correct?
Nepotism at its finest..??

PS.. I don’t blame you. I would do the same. Just don’t make it sound like you’ve actually achieved something.
Take it and run with it. Truly good for you that your dad helped you. I would do the the exact same thing if I could, but probably not boast.
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jeez, isn't this just a tad needlessly harsh? Getting ahead of ones self a bit?....sure. But I think many of us could use a little optimism right now. I don't think it is crazy to think that a guy hired by his age will eventually spend some good years as a very senior captain. Not like it is merit based anyway, so I doubt he is gloating in some future "accomplishment".
 
kyleb said:
I agree 100% with this. My employer has people on 6 continents and spread all across the US. We completely stopped travel in April last year and have barely resumed. I don't see us returning to even 50% of previous levels of business travel for a long time. People have figured out virtual meeting and that they save a lot of time and money. I'd be very scared if I was in the business travel (hotel or airline) business. Leisure travel will come back when COVID dies out, but business travel...not so much, at least for a while.
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This exact statement has been made for every airline crises back to the DC2. It’s been wrong every time. As a friend who is a CEO said nothing makes a impression like in person communication. Is the guy on the phone or computer screen going to get the contract or the guy who made the effort to be sitting in your office! Delta is actually seeing a much stronger return in business travel than they planned.
 
WDD said:
Hard to think that plane only 25 years old is already discontinued.
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Think about the 707 airframes that are still flying... (even though Boeing doesn't want to support any life extension programs...)
 
M2C.

I do business to business market research and competitive intelligence.

What we are seeing with our customers and industries in general is Covid Zoom burnout. They are wanting more and more in person contact. Employees are experiencing the same.

My bet is that we will do zooming more than in the past, see a few more people work in different states than where the office is - but we will return to travel for face to face.

The current work environment is not sustainable.
 
Jeff767 said:
This exact statement has been made for every airline crises back to the DC2. It’s been wrong every time. As a friend who is a CEO said nothing makes a impression like in person communication. Is the guy on the phone or computer screen going to get the contract or the guy who made the effort to be sitting in your office! Delta is actually seeing a much stronger return in business travel than they planned.
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I think people who sell face to face will move back fairly quickly to their old travel habits. But I know my employer has saved millions on corporate travel by having internal meetings virtually vs having the entire sales team (for instance) come together from around the country. The folks in the E-suites believe we have moved the meter on our ability to do virtual meetings and are insisting that we'll continue to lean heavily on virtual tools going forward, even after COVID is in the rearview. I'm sure our executives aren't the only ones with that view.

So...We may look up in 10 years and see that the world has returned to 2019 business travel levels, but even if that happens, I think the translation back to "normal" will be slow, not fast.

We'll see.
 
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Bob Noel said:
Think about the 707 airframes that are still flying... (even though Boeing doesn't want to support any life extension programs...)
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Nearly 400 KC-135s with the USAF and they are projected stay in service at least another 10 up to 20 years. By then some of them will be 80 years old and have something like 40,000 hours.
 
Seanaldinho said:
Nearly 400 KC-135s with the USAF and they are projected stay in service at least another 10 up to 20 years. By then some of them will be 80 years old and have something like 40,000 hours.
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But how much of the aircraft's actual structure is original..? fatigued parts get replaced, the flight decks have been totally overhauled, engines replaced, is it really even the same plane anymore?
 
Seanaldinho said:
Nearly 400 KC-135s with the USAF and they are projected stay in service at least another 10 up to 20 years. By then some of them will be 80 years old and have something like 40,000 hours.
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40,000 hours? that's it? I would have thought they'd have more hours than that.
 
40,000 sounds low. I’m sure there are many airliners out there that though younger, have 60-70,000 hours on them.
 
Tantalum said:
But how much of the aircraft's actual structure is original..? fatigued parts get replaced, the flight decks have been totally overhauled, engines replaced, is it really even the same plane anymore?
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Good question, wiki says some aircraft skins have been replaced but how much deeper that goes? maybe a mil flier can answer that. I'm not sure wing ribs and fuselage pieces have been replaced. Engines and avionics are always disposable though.

Bob Noel said:
40,000 hours? that's it? I would have thought they'd have more hours than that.
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That's why they have 400 of them :).

Granted, if all 400 flew 40,000 hours thats 16M hours or somewhere in the neighborhood of 1800+ years.
 
Seanaldinho said:
Good question, wiki says some aircraft skins have been replaced but how much deeper that goes? maybe a mil flier can answer that. I'm not sure wing ribs and fuselage pieces have been replaced. Engines and avionics are always disposable though.



That's why they have 400 of them :).

Granted, if all 400 flew 40,000 hours thats 16M hours or somewhere in the neighborhood of 1800+ years.
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I am pretty sure the C5 fleet got all new wings at some point.. would be interesting to know either way what percentage of the plane is actually original..
 
jordane93 said:
Yea I’m not too worried. I was playing around with the seniority calculator and I’m going to retire number 34 in the company and hold wide body captain for 10+ years!
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As someone who is also "slated" to retire in the top 30 of an airline that has a five figure sized pilot group, don't put much faith into those future projections, especially when looking at what kind of flying you'll be doing. As we just saw with Delta here, fleets come and go and fwiw Delta has never been a fan of doing their own international flying. They'd rather farm it out.

I hope your non-furlough goes as quickly as possible and you get into a seat ASAP. Good luck.
 
Bob Noel said:
Think about the 707 airframes that are still flying... (even though Boeing doesn't want to support any life extension programs...)
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What, the maybe 5 707's that are still flying? MIT just retired theirs last week, so there is probably less than 5 now.
 
The difference of the construction of the old jets versus the new generation plays into the life span. It was not uncommon to see a B727 or B747 with 100,000 hours airframe time still working 40 years later. These planes were designed on a drafting table with a slide rule, so the construction and engineering were robust to today's standards.

New generation jets are designed on a computer to very exacting standards using better (lighter) materials. These newer generation jets will not have the lifespan of the older models. And the manufacturers want it this way for obvious reasons.
 
Groundpounder said:
What, the maybe 5 707's that are still flying? MIT just retired theirs last week, so there is probably less than 5 now.
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um, the E-8C is still flying isn't it? ok, it's not exactly a 707, but it was a modified 707 airframe. not to mention the E-3 aircraft...

the MIT bird is gone? well, that will make the KBED nimby pukes happy.
 
Doc Holliday said:
The difference of the construction of the old jets versus the new generation plays into the life span. It was not uncommon to see a B727 or B747 with 100,000 hours airframe time still working 40 years later. These planes were designed on a drafting table with a slide rule, so the construction and engineering were robust to today's standards.

New generation jets are designed on a computer to very exacting standards using better (lighter) materials. These newer generation jets will not have the lifespan of the older models. And the manufacturers want it this way for obvious reasons.
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The sooner your product breaks or expires the sooner you can sell them a new one..
 
Delta sure was doing a lot of international flying with their own aircraft for wanting to farm it all out. 60 plus flights a day just to Europe! The 777’s are being replaced with A350’s.
 
Tantalum said:
I am pretty sure the C5 fleet got all new wings at some point.. would be interesting to know either way what percentage of the plane is actually original..
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Another quick wiki read - the A models developed cracks and were therefore rewinged.
 
Lindberg said:
And the sooner they become your competitor's customer.
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..maybe, but competitors tend to make their products just good enough. If we use mobile phones as an example currently iPhones, Pixel, Samsung.. they all seem to last about 1-3 years depending on how aggressively you use it and care for it. Eventually the battery life gets prohibitively low, the hardware can no longer keep up with the software of newer apps and upgrades, etc.
 
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