Originally Posted by
aviator1998
Is there a certain time of the year the WB slots typicall pop up, or is it completely random?
It is the time of year when Boeing fixes their SH!T. We had vacancy bids in the Fall anticipating that our next 787s would be coming on schedule in early 2024. Then Boeing admitted they won't make that schedule. So, they don't need to do many 787 bids as they were planning on both retirments and new deliveries, and instead are just getting retirments. Our next 787 is 37 down the production list. They are supposed to be building 5 a month, but they have been actually doing about 3 a month. So, unless Boeing can pull a rabbit out of a hat to compete with Airbus trying to pull a rabbit out of the hat, our next 787 won't come until late 2024 or early 2025. At that point we are getting about 1 out of every 3-4 that Boeing makes for awhile, so they should be coming at 1 a month. So, with all that, I figure bids will have to start up again fairly soon to accomodate retirments and hopefully some new deliveries. So, pretty slow at first to just cover retirements and then pick up pace as the deliveries start getting close.
With the delays in 787 deliveries they are now planning on the first 767-300 retirments in 2027. Considering those are 1991 build birds, you can see that they have a bunch of plans for the new airplanes that don't include replacement right away.