Originally Posted by
gloopy
Sounds good, but define "fleet plan."
What I mean by that is how can they possibly have a legit, comprehensive fleet plan right now based on anything? Current numbers are meaningless but we'll get much more clarity a couple months from now.
They already committed to 88/90's gone, which isn't the biggest deal since the majority 88's were gone this year anyway and the smaller 90 fleet is likely safely in the "demand reduction" zone for any realistic scenario.
From an article in another thread:
"...bookings for Thanksgiving are up 38 percent from last year, while the other winter holidays are up 40 percent."
If the "fleet plan" is basically the 88/90's gone that wold make sense. But if they commit to irreversable fleet decisions and staffing/displacement decisions that would take several years to undo, they could be simply locking in revenue/marketshare/profit loss for years to come.
Just hop on Delta.com and plug in some random city pairs and you can see that demand is ticking back up. I looked at a few round trips from DTW-LAX, DTW-SFO for next week, and quite a few are sold out. Granted that's with the 60% capacity restriction, but it's clear that there is a pent up travel demand. Zoom meetings can only accomplish so much. Anybody I've talked to, stuck working from home, is done with this. They can't wait to get back to work.