Most of L-UAL's 757s are being retired. This is supposedly because the cost of putting them through their next heavy maintenance visit/overhaul is prohibitive. It may have had something to do with a predecessor VP's selling of engines and spare parts, and/or cancelling long-term overhaul contracts. Cheap in the short-term; expensive in the long-term.

They are keeping 25 as I understand it. On the other hand, I think the L-UAL 767s are all being kept.

CAL's airplanes are slightly newer, and as such, are further from the next heavy mx visit. There may also have been some pre-emptive contracts put in-place to make such visits economically viable.

Supposedly, both fleets merge next year.

There are some instrumentation differences between UAL's and CAL's fleets (not sure exactly what it is). The FAA said the fleets could not be mixed until the cockpits were harmonized. Why this has taken more than 2 years is beyond me.

Isn't this also true of the 777 fleets?

It means if the crew desk is short a 756 copilot in ORD, and there is a 76T copilot available, but not a 756 copilot, the flight gets cancelled.

You would think swapping some gauges would be cheaper in the long run. Economy of scale is lost when two large, efficient fleets are split by manpower and training, making them inefficient.

I believe I read the other day that the 777 fleet finally has the same logbook procedures, which should allow them to be merged. They might still need the same flight-planning software.

Wow.