RoMax wrote:From what I heard (but they are just rumours) the options SN was looking at A32F, CSeries or a combination. Meanwhile SN's decision is said to be presented to LH for evaluation.
Personally I don't think SN (or LH) wants to play around too much with the current generation regional jets and instead make a final and firm replacement at once. Of course it has to be financially viable...which is the big problem when talking about SN.
I agree with extra A320's/A319's, but not exactly with CR7's, I believe the CSeries will be part of the replacement (whith LH being able to place a follow up order under presumably nice conditions as an early and 'big' high-profile customer).
What's the point of having a mix of A32S and Cseries to replace 12 RJ100's?
The CS100 is a total dog economically: Swiss are going to stuff 125 seats in it in a very cozy configuration, just to make it viable. They must have realised that they can't make money with 110 seats.
FlightMate wrote:What about the superjet? Thought it was high on their list, 7-8 years ago.
The SSJ production rate is too slow, the backlog at the current rate of production goes well into 2020's.
Sukhoi have not been able to ramp-up their production, this seems to be a decades long continued problem with the Russian manufacturing environment. It takes a Stalin to keep things flowing...
convair wrote:I wouldn't be surprised if LH was to pass on to SN a number of their CRJ700s, while increasing its own fleet of the 900s.
Increasing the fleet of CR9's, I doubt it, they seem to be hooked up on the Ejets.
Passing on the CR7's to SN? If they are owned by LH and written down, I guess that they could lease them out to SN at a reasonable rate. The CR7 would reduce the trip costs by reducing fuel burn by 25% and maintenance costs. Supposing that LH agrees to lease them at the same rate as SN is paying on the RJ100, the operating cost advantage will be around 15-20% per flight.
However 1, compared to the RJ100 you loose 24% of seats. There will be a little bit of an advantage as you can manage to capture the highest yields for every flight and reduce your total operating costs whenever the RJ100 would not have been full, but it's not enough to relaunch the airline.
However 2:
I estimate that adding the CR7 and getting rid of the RJ100's will cost SN around 20-30 million euro's, between retraining SN flight, cabin and maintenance crews, D-checks that LH is holding off on the CR7's, whatever it will take to phase out the RJ100's.
So if only used as an interim solution, I think that it doesn't make sense, it would just cost as much to extend the RJ100 leases and operate them for the interim duration.
If SN was a profitable airline serving a strong market/niche, I would say to go for Ejets or Cseries, even CS100's. The Q400's wouldn't even have crossed my mind.
However, this is not the case, so I think that any other choice is not viable and certainly not realistic.
It looks like it's still very valid today.
