I could buy into that theory if they coupled the parking announcement with an identical capacity announcement but they didn't. 1/4 of the whale fleet is being parked with nothing new coming outside the mysterious widebody RFP. That RFP will be mostly (or all) replacement for ER's anyway, and on a negative pilot block hour ratio too. The RFP also contains potential 787's, but only if they win the bid, but we already have 787's for 2020 delivery

Meanwhile the JV balance is bad and getting worse with no intention to honor the contract. Meanwhile the great ER purge continues and while we split a dwindiling percentage of the US-AMS/CDG bock hours/ESK's, the once direct markets that now connect on them stop counting our share as soon as the pax transfer in their hubs.

If your theory were the case, they would have needed to immediately announce 5 or 6 growth 777's (or even more 330's, etc) for almost immediate delivery. Instead we continue to shrink our already anemic widebody fleet and the only definite plans in the upcoming RFP will be replacing more ER's with fewer 330's or equivalent.

I find it hard to believe that we were sitting 4 whales fat on underutilized system block hours all along and they just suddenly flexed up utilization on existing airframes to fund it. Even if that's the case, I doubt it could be credibly argued that the remaining 12 whales worth of lift are as well. If so, we would have gotten rid of them years ago.