Just a health warning about that statement bex: about two months back it's author attended a SEP forum and told the assembled bunch of flight crew about forthcoming plans, mix of DEPs and FPPs he expected to see, and roughly when. Two weeks later the plan had all changed, and since I had paraphrased the SEP forum comments here I was left a tad red faced.
I don't doubt the author is telling it as he sees it today but whilst he is very very highly placed in the Flight Ops food chain we know commercial are well capable of springing surprises. Whilst the statement is better than an information vacuum I'd still add a note of caution until we see in print both the results of the Fleet plan and then Cassandra (internal bid process ) results.