Southwest Airlines to Pay $100 Million to Refurbish Delta 717 Jets
AirTran Boeing 717s
Southwest Airlines has agreed to repaint and refurbish the 88 Boeing 717 jets it has leased to Delta Airlines to the tune of $100 million.
Southwest agreed to sublease the smaller jets to Delta 2 months ago, and is only happy to spruce up the birds as they are delighted to be able to lease out the entire fleet.
“For us to make a deal with Delta, we agreed to pay those conversion costs,” Southwest chairman and CEO Gary Kelly said Thursday on Southwest’s Q2 earnings call.
Southwest “amazingly found a home for all 88 of those aircraft,” Kelly said. “You might think of it as a volume discount that we were willing to offer to induce our sublease customers to take those aircraft.”
“The value that we get from not flying the 717s and instead flying the 737s is substantial,” Kelly said. “So we’ll pay for that conversion cost in the first six months.”
Southwest will also redo the interiors of the 717s.
Category: Airnation
That’s wonderful! I think it’s perfect that Southwest and Delta could make this deal. It works out for both airlines so perfectly. Southwest really should be thankful that Delta is able to take the 717′s so easily, and Delta is lucky that Southwest had 717′s to give! I can’t wait to see the first 717 in Delta livery! I hope Southwest gets the paint job right!
Yep. I gathered from the people I talked to that this was a gift to Southwest. They were prepared to mothball the planes but Delta wanted them so it worked out perfect.
I’m so glad!
A B-717 by any other name is still a DC-9.