Trader,
I am not sure I understood you post. Do u mean to say that they will be keeping these 5 a/c as stand-by, or will the reduced fleet be flown less?
From what I heard, there may be a bigger problem with the new wave system proposed by the consultants. Half the connections are at 40 minutes. This seems to be a very tight schedule. The GF fleet is unreliable and cannot perform well enough to sustain such low connecting times.