Originally Posted by
Round Luggage
You do know the retirements will normalize to planned amounts the further from Covid we get and no major has the fleet to bring the flying in house. That hurdle would be least for Delta and yet for them that would require growing all of Delta by about 20% through organic growth which is extremely difficult.
The “planned amounts” are still record numbers of age caused retirements at the legacies. Yes, that was aggravated by the early retirements offered early in COVID and the domino effect of training through multi-type fleets, but even after those early retirements legacies are STILL looking at record numbers in the out years. And the regional CA shortage will aggravate the problem further since new ATPs progress is being delayed. And the new leverage the major pilot groups have is giving them increased QOL and soft time which has the effect of increasing the number of pilots the majors will need to fly even the same number of aircraft, far less the massive numbers they have on order. And gate crowding and concern over CO2 emissions are forcing the airlines to look at bigger and more fuel efficient aircraft with less frequency. Boeing (and others) were forecasting a crippling shortage of pilots long before COVID, and it has now arrived.
It isn’t just COVID. The regionals are dying the death of a thousand cuts. 50 seaters will go first. Then we’ll be seeing even the 76 seaters replaced - by more more CASM and fuel efficient Airbus 220s and Embraer E2 195s. At majors.