Originally Posted by
thrust
In terms of narrowbody to widebody ratios, every major airline is “primarily narrowbody”. Emirates and other Middle Eastern/Asian airlines that are state subsidized (yes, the US airlines are subsidized too) are the exception, not the rule. UAL certainly has more narrowbodies than widebodies. How many of UAL’s 777s are still grounded due to the engine failure over Denver? How many Group 4 equivalent airframes does UAL have if you subtract the grounded, ancient 777 non-ERs? Probably still more than AA, but much closer. UAL is going to retire their massive fleet of 772s, both ER and non, about the same time AA will… will they replace them 1:1 with the 777X or 787 variants?
In short… go where you can drive to work.
I should have said “almost exclusively” narrow body airline. UAL has a much higher percentage of widebody flying. AAL and UAL are not close when it comes to international network and widebody fleets. I think my original statement is correct. If a future newhire has widebody aspirations they are much better off going to United. If they want a quick upgrade then AAL is probably the better choice. Yes I expect United will replace group 4 acft 1:1 with 787s or 777x.
https://www.aviation24.be/airlines/u...expansion/amp/
UAL has 200 widebody acft out of 610 total or 33% (according to APC)
AAL has 112 widebody acft out of 835 or 13%.
United also has a lot more 4 Pilot routes which drives higher staffing on group 4 acft.