Not wanting to disturb your peaceful sleep at night, but I would simply point out the obvious fallacy in your logic that has previously been discussed on APC. The number one carrier in North America in terms of profitability is Delta Airlines whose fleet is much older than legacy United's fleet. Nor do they have a plan to buy vast quantities of new planes anytime soon.

Delta's management seems to think a healthy airline ROI comes from minimizing capital costs and maximizing profits. They spent money on internal technology and not shiny new planes. This is the complete opposite of our management that has chosen the older technology for maintenance, baggage handling, and bookings. In each case, United now uses technology that is 30 years old or older and the time required to book a ticket, track a bag, and update the maintenance log book have increased. (United even cancelled it's contract with Starbucks for a cheaper alternative and Delta picked up the Starbucks account. Talk about poetic examples.) When that incremental time loss is multiplied across hundreds of thousands of transactions daily and globally the impact is considerable, but proving that to the finance types that seem to be running the company right now is all but impossible. Their Hell-Bent focus on cost reduction is causing them to lose sight of the end user realities. They need a good VP of Six Sigma to shake things up a bit and force the upper level managers to meet with the workers on the ground in a setting that is not intimidating.

Fact: Delta Airlines flies old planes, and they are succeeding. We are flying shiny new planes and struggling to keep up. It's about route structure and service to our customers NOT the age of the aircraft.