Originally Posted by
Itsajob
United and UAX have planes and crews sitting around doing nothing. They can do an equipment swap for a bigger plane in the short term. If 2 daily flights on a 145 are filling up, put a 175 or 737 on one of the segments. There are plenty of 777’s and 787’s collecting dust to use if the higher density routes start to fill. Seating capacity isn’t exactly a problem right now. I wish that it was.
My understanding is that the UAL crew are already paid for, the planes are available, and fuel is cheap right now, so they are using bigger planes on some of the routes that could be covered by RJs. Since the RJs operate on a FFD schedule, if they don't fly, the company operating them doesn't get paid. It seems like it might actually be cheaper to fly the bigger plane without a full load at this point.