Thanks all for your input. Just to clarify:
Currently, we operate 3 types of aicraft on our short-to-medium range services; namely, a mixture of B737-200 Advanced (with Dual channel, Cat IIIa Autoflight, PDCS, GPS, P&W JT8D-17A Engines); Airbus A300's and Airbus A320's. The company wants to rationalise our fleet into ONE type, which, after many months of competitive bidding between Airbus and Boeing, has ended up in the order of 21 B737-800's to be operated as a common fleet with the -200advanced.
The advantages to the company are a single short/medium range fleet with one set of instructors, check pilots, rostering & admin staff, schedulers, parts & other maintenance considerations and a more efficient fleet operation on the whole.
The advantages to the pilots, so far, are only the anticipation of extra command requirements, speeding up the advancement process. I can't think of any more. Can anyone else?
My question is, can these two different, yet similar, a/c be operated as one fleet?