It is hard to argue with our profitability. I’d love to see some Boeing WBs to keep Airbus in check.

 

why? United and American don’t have airbuses to keep Boeing “in check”

 

<Export/Import Bank has entered the chat>

A5S

 

I have zero complaints if our long term long haul fleets have a sidestick and tray table.

 

so 93 is the end game, but 13 of those have not been ordered yet.
might as well call it 200 end game! So exciting!!

 

I believe you completely, but I swear I read we didn’t get the humidifiers on our A350’s. Can someone confirm if we do or don’t have humidifiers on our A350’s?

 

never bought them

 

Been here over 20 years and while I do admire guys that are always positive and have "glass-half-full" outlooks on life...lots of Delta pilots are always foretelling a future with tons of WB purchases. Unfortunately, I have seen the opposite at Delta. Look at our WB ratio in 2000 and look at it now. We have been slowly getting out of the widebody business year after year. Like a falling stock, there may be some upturns to that trend here and there but an overall downward trajectory is what I have experienced. COVID proved to EB that we do better by leaving the WB flying to our partners (who have ratios that are way more skewed to WB than we do). ALPA has been misled by great sounding platitudes from our leaders but we continue to slide and put evermore Delta customers on other metal.

We may have some WB orders in the books but look at the NW A340s and 787s on order...what happened to those? In my short career, we have parked L-1011s, MD-11s, 767-200s, 747s and 777s. I strongly suspect the remaining 767s are soon to go as well as the older 330s. IF we receive all the airplanes on the order books, we very well may still be below today's count.

 

Its interesting that everyone blames a reduction in widebodies at Delta on our international code share agreements. The strange part is that the actual reduction in widebodies has been on domestic routes. We used to fly L1011’s and the 767-200/300/400 all over the US. We used to have L1011’s all over LGA. The 767-400 was picked specifically because it could fit in LGA and the A330 could not. It was purchased as a domestic L1011 replacement.
In 1986 I believe we had a total of 8 widebody international aircraft. It would be interesting to see the actual international widebody numbers flying international the last 30 years. In 1994 post PanAm and when Delta first started code sharing we had 62 widebody international aircraft. Today we have around 150 with 39 more coming quickly. By the end of 2024 our international widebodies will have tripled since 1994 and the start of code-sharing.

 

The key words you mention, 39 more coming quickly. For the first time in 15 years at Delta I see the formation of a reversal. I am, however, cautiously optimistic this will be a total gain after the ER fleet sees its end of days. Our western bases have almost no international to speak of. I am hoping this order changes that.