Originally Posted by gloopy

Especially when fuel is still pretty reasonable, they're paid for, and the regional situation isn't anywhere near being stabilized despite the respite we've seen by throwing some money at Endeavor. There is still a lot to shake out in the sector, and the mass retirement hiring hasn't really even begun yet.

Then there's the C Series, which despite the few micro-operators working some of the bugs out, its still a very open question of their ability to meet their increasing delivery schedule while maintaining their advertised (and our expected) optimistic marketing based dispatch reliability assumptions. If all of those stars don't align perfectly (and odds are they won't) we would need the relief from at least a flexible 88 remnant to some degree.

So when we're told 900 is approved and that will probably go several hundred higher (just like pretty much every other year's numbers the last several years) then suddenly a hard 700 hiring number is floating around, the only thing that really explains that is a planned capacity purge to subsidize the endless growth ULCC's and possibly starting the retreat from ME3 and scab FoC airlines early on in that battle.

Either that or the 700 is fake news...but why would it be since we're not in negotiations and there's no reason to try and manage our expectations in that regard.