Originally Posted by Andy

OK, so current plan is mainline shrinkage of 5 net aircraft. .7% mainline fleet shrinkage.
Current plan also includes regional partner shrinkage of 11 net aircraft. 555 to 544 or 2% regional fleet shrinkage.
It's nice to see regional flying shrink more than mainline flying; let's hope it's a trend.

UCH is not the only airline that's been shrinking; Delta has also shrunk. And of course AMR has been and will continue to shrink. So it isn't only UCH that's shrinking.
At the same time, RPMs (revenue passenger miles) have been declining. This is simply airlines shrinking to match declining air passenger demand.
While the airlines shrinking is not good for pilot advancement to larger equipment/pilot hiring, it's helping keep the airlines (other than AMR) profitKable. It's good to see a bit of sanity in airline planning rather than the traditional feast/famine cycles of the last few decades.

I don't believe the rumors of new aircraft orders other than as replacements for aircraft that are on the block to be retired. LUAL's A319/320 fleet's getting pretty long in the tooth; I could believe that there's a replacement order in store for them. But additional lift? I wouldn't expect to see that until we see an increase in RPMs - and that additional lift would likely initially take the form of delaying retirement of airframes while accepting delivery of replacement airframes rather than a large new order.