--=======1BF35BFA======= Content-Type: text/plain; x-avg-checked=avg-ok-55092684; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Here's an interesting bit from the Google translation of a German-language item http://www.riedel.ch/swissairgeschichte.htm dated today: If the Swissair would not have gone in the past year into the deduction deferment of payment, then the "Ticino" would be supposed today in the fleet of the US freighter FedEX at home. The Swissair had decided end of the 90's to replace its MD11 fleet by more economical airbus A340-600. In April 1998 agreed upon Flightlease, the leasing company of the SAirGroup, to which actually all Swissair airplanes belonged, and FedEx (Federal express corporation), the sales of 20 Md-11 airplanes at the American express freight specialists. Annually four airplanes should be converted between August 2002 and December 2006 to freighters and be inserted on world-wide route network by FedEx. This agreement on the high point of the boom years in the Frachtbusiness was both for FedEx, which could not buy new Md-11 after the produktionseinstellung more, and for the Swissair, which wanted to change the long-distance fleet over starting from summer 2002 to airbus A 340-600, an ideal case. In November 2001, after the Swissair Grounding and in particular after the collapse of the air traffic arising due to the acts of terrorism of the 11. September 2001, withdrew FedEx in connection with the deduction deferment of payment of the SAir Group from the contract. The FedEx did not come the development in Switzerland probably inconveniently. After it was already difficult enough to charge to capacity the 653 own airplanes one did not have to develop still additional, necessary capacities. However admits that FedEx was interested in the machines in principle still, however no more became to the 1998 negotiated prices. This, because due to the world-wide over-capacities the prices for airliners substantial had sunk. (and so on) Apparently, 4 LTU aircraft and 16 Swissair ones were in the original deal. SR lost one, of course, near Halifax. Robin Johnson At 12:43 AM 1/23/2003 Thursday -0500, you wrote: > I heard today that Fedex will announce soon that they have aquired 19 >MD11's from Swissair. Maybe they'll be able to paint those two ex-AA MD11's >that have been running around. I was also told that they now have 23 MD10's >in their fleet. > >Stuart --=======1BF35BFA======= Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-avg=cert; x-avg-checked=avg-ok-55092684 Content-Disposition: inline --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.443 / Virus Database: 248 - Release Date: 1/10/2003 --=======1BF35BFA=======--