Originally Posted by saturn

UA is very clear with their 1 year, 5 year, 10 year plans. I have heard annual hiring goals, fleet goals, etc. They even coined it with a catchy name (United Next). 28k pilots? Wow! Will it happen? Maybe, probably. By 2030? Who knows. At least their intentions are known.

Delta is very different. We have vague platitudes of an annual "flight plan", and have to read the tea leaves with aircraft orders with obscure delivery timelines to speculate what that means for growth. Do we retire planes, or are we keeping them longer and take new jets as growth? We don't know. They don't tell us their medium and long term plans for the enterprise. They haven't given us a target pilot size beyond 1 year in about ever. Forget about >1 year or by 2030. In 2022, doubt many people pilots knew that we'd be at 16k now, or 17k by the end of this year.

My take is this. UA has better hubs for intl than AA & DL. They are undersized domestically vs DL & AA. Adding NBs only helps balance WB network feed. Coupled with their over-reliance on RJs, mainline UA has room to grow.

DL will grow too, but we've absorbed most of the 50-seat RJs compared to our peers. Growth domestically will be measured. Opportunities will be international, but we split more flying with partners by choice, limiting mainline pilot growth. We are trying to get a foothold in airports that can sustain intl expansion (LAX/NYC/SEA/BOS). We can't catch United's scale IMO. I think we'll continue to hire and grow to not be dwarfed in scale by UA..but it will be quietly over time, just like how we got here today.