It seems that a deal has been hammered out over the 717’s with Delta and Boeing, Southwest Airlines.
The agreement is for 88 Boeing 717-200’s to be leased from Boeing Capital or subleased from Southwest Airlines, with 3 aircraft a month to be delivered from August 2013. The year-on-year delivery plan looks something like this:
- 16 to be transferred in 2013
- 36 to be transferred in 2014
- 13 to be transferred i n2015
For Delta this represents a golden opportunity to get shot 218 50 seat regional aircraft, and add to its larger regional jet fleet, whilst saving money along the line after agreements with Unions.
Seating plans have already been decided, with 110 seats available made up of:
- 12 First class seats (configured 2-2 seats across)
- 15 in Economy Comfort (configured 2-3 seats across)
- 83 in Economy (configured 2-3 seats across)
The Boeing 717 is an oddity of an aircraft, derived from Douglas DC-9, and has been through different designers and owners…
- From the DC-9 to the McDonald Douglas MD-80,
- Through to McDonald DouglasMD-90,
- Through to the he MD-95 until Boeing purchased McDonald Douglas and re=branded the MD-95 as the Boeing 717 as the final derivative of the original design (although the less said about the Chinese COMAC ARJ-21 – which uses MD-90 tooling to give it the resemblance to the DC-9 family of aircraft, with an identical cabin cross section, nose profile and tail – the better).
A total of 156 717’s were manufactured between 1998 and 2006 with Delta now taking on over 56% of the produced fleet.