If I replace 50 with 70-76 seats and E175’s routes with 319’s, then 73’s for the shifted 319’s, utilizing the “musical chairs” method. At the the end of the day, you’re still adding a massive amount of more available seats into the market IF you keep every slot. It doesn’t change the fact UA is going to have to sell a hell of a lot more tickets EVERY DAY to keep every slot they have.

 

Well you sound to know everything. Why don’t you leave it to the revenue mgmt folks. All I know is I spend a lot of time flying into places I did on a 50 seater in my 319/320. Those flights are full. UA mgmt might know something

 

Delta use to send 175’s into BNA from MSP, every flight was oversold, so they now send 737-8/9. They use to send 737 into IAH from MSP, Now they send 900/175’s. Your classic go to line, “I fly a 319 into my old 50 seat stomping grounds” is irrelevant. He’s just looking for answers.

We’ve lost a lot of old routes out of ORD to the 320/737, and picked up new routes that mainline use to fly recently. It’s just your normal constant flip flopping from UAL/DAL/AAG to meet demand.

 

yes, overall seat count is going up. But none of this is happening overnight. You will see that over a 3-4 year time frame.

the other little piece that got lost in all the hype is that there is a lot of “fleet flexibility”. Listen to the investor call or read up on the transcript.

basically, UA has the option to push out a lot of deliveries into future years and / or can retire more mainline equipment earlier - think 757 and the super tired A319/320 fleet.

All of this can be massive growth or a more muted expansion

 

Markets evolve. Some markets that were previously served by smaller equipment saw rising demand that required larger aircraft to meet that demand. Some went the other way, and some proved to no longer be financially viable and were dropped, allowing assets to be shifted to other places. Global air traffic was growing rapidly before COVID and most analysts think that trend will continue after we recover from the pandemic. Major hubs are saturated on a good day and go into meltdown mode when there is weather. Due to this, only way to meet rising demand is with aircraft that have larger seating capacity. United has chosen what they think will be the best path forward. They know that the single class 50 seaters are very unpopular, they are inefficient, as they age the cost of maintaining mechanical reliability significantly increases, and there is no real replacement other than the 550 and dealing with their performance limitations. They also know that United pilots are not going to relax scope and since they have shown that they don’t consider a new SNB to be the best option, there will be no increase in 70/76 seat aircraft. Given the decisions made by management, UAX will shrink as the single class 50 seaters are retired, and UAL will then take back that flying.

Much of the big aircraft order is to accomplish the same things with the mainline fleet. Bigger 737’s will replace smaller ones on certain routes, those smaller jets will then allow the addition of seats to other markets, older and less efficient aircraft such as the 757 are becoming more expensive to maintain will be replaced. United is updating their entire fleet, not focusing on UAL vs UAX.

 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Using your BNA example it’s gone from 145/200’s to 175/700’s and now it’s mainline.

My point about flying into multiple markets I used to on the 145 is that the demand is growing. Instead of 7 50 seat AC day it’s now 3-5 Mainline AC.

it’s all the shifting of 175 onto smaller markets while mainline AC move in when demand increases. Everyone at the regionals should be cheering this shift. It means more jobs at mainline that pay more then regional wages.

 

If you’re in my position as a CA who’s nearing being competitive sitting at solid airline that’s expecting attrition and growth, then yeah you’re all for it, in a respectable manner. Tough to pick up turbine time on the street while UA offers more right seat jobs.

I’m also not an arrogant little prick, you and I both know more than half the seniority list at any regional airline is made up FO’s, most who don’t even meet the minimum requirements that UA requires. Most certainly not even close to being competitive.

If the speculation is correct, you’re going to have a lot of regional pilots sent to the streets looking for work. We’re going to have a fortunate group of regional pilots who will be beneficiaries of UA’s fleet cleanup, and some very unfortunate pilots as well.

 

And unfortunately that’s how the cookie crumbles. There’s ton of regional pilots who suffered the same fate (losing jobs) at the beginning of COVID

 

Yup I agree, just don’t be rubbing it in to these guys/gals ok?