The airline could not contract out the work, although it could lease planes from others.
The main critique is that it is ridiculously expensive to lease planes, rather than buy them.
In comparing the proposed lease to purchasing the planes, the budget office concluded that leasing the planes would cost $161 million for each plane compared with $131 million through purchase -- lease planes have higher financing costs.
The mere threat of further industrial action has involved it in commitments to lease planes from other airlines and redeploy staff in order to fulfil its schedules.Meanwhile, the low-cost airlines Ryanair and easyJet are snapping at its heels.
Also, established charter companies say that start-ups like Blue Star cannot offer the same menu of options because they do not own their own fleets and must get in line to lease planes from others.
We've had bears chase workers across the lease, planes skidding sideways down snow-packed airstrips, helicopters losing altitude, and too many cases of people coming very close to getting seriously hurt or killed.
There is demand for low-cost flights, he says, but low-cost airlines "cannot operate because the costs are not low .Besides high fuel and ticket taxes, African airlines have to pay more to lease planes than carriers in other regions.
He added that the first leased plane would be delivered to AirTran in September 2004 straight from Boeing's assembly line.
"They get rid of the big planes and go to fractional ownership, or they go to charter, or they come back into the marketplace with a leased plane," he said.
Expensively leased planes stood idle.
