Neat site. 972 aircraft in 2015, 935 in 2016. Whats the fleet count today? I know you like block hours but if they have the planes then they will use them, won't they? If not, they will idle them.

 

Block hours are what matter

 

S80’s had a lot of ‘unassigned’ aircraft. So block hours, and not fleet count, is more important.

 

I’d guess 2014 block hours were hour because they hadn’t trimmed the merger overlap yet.

 

Agreed. A 3% percent reduction is fairly mild. Hopefully it starts trending up.

 

The plan to grow starts with adding RJ feed to hubs, trying to capture those markets where it makes sense to fly to a UA hub. Some established markets have upgauged to mainline already, and some hub to hub and hub to major markets(mco, sea, bos, tpa) have upgauged as well. None of that has really driven a need to expand the seniority list by much. The added mainline flying which has, has mostly been offset by increased scheduling efficiency with pbs and increased reserve utilization.

Having said all that, the mgmt plan is either going to take off soon (pun intended), or capacity growth will stall and wall street will be the first to get notified. New mgmt has not been ambiguous about saying UAL's previous shrinkage was a bad idea, so if you had to pick a legacy that will offer the most relative seniority progression over the next few years due to SL expansion, UAL is what I'd bet on.

 

“so if you had to pick a legacy that will offer the most relative seniority progression over the next few years due to SL expansion, UAL is what I'd bet on.“

Alex - for $500 I’ll take “which legacy offers the best relative seniority gain?”

17/22/27/32 yr seniotity number forecast, early 2027 data, using APC’s data -

AA - 4500/2000/950/400
UA - 5100/2550/1250/650
DL - 6500/4350/3000/1700

 

Not sure what your point is, your first number shows a 17yrs from now number, whereas I clearly qualified my statement. Lets say someone wants to be a top pay rate widebody FO lineholder 5 years from now...best odds-UAL

 

For the next 8 yrs AA has more retirements, both as a percentage and actual count.

Your first statement related to relative seniority gain. The data doesn’t support your statement that UA’s relative gain exceeds AA’s.

UA’s larger w/b total makes your second statement, using a different comparison, perhaps true. Using today's bidding patterns guys might be CA’s at AA in five years. 3,600+ retirements, 25% of the list, in the next five years makes that possible. All it will take is 2% more retirements in the next five years, vs the planned retirements, as well as everyone having the same bidding patterns in the future.

Your second comparison, using w/b FO’s, is tricker. We don’t have UA’s G4 data. In five years only 3 of 9 G4 FO bid statuses will at AA be available to a current newhire using today’s bidding/planning data. In six years it advances to 5 of 9 due to retirements and in 7 yrs it will be 9 of 9.

You’re also assuming UA will expand faster than DL or AA in the next five years? Has a management mentioned that?

 

Are the numbers on APC correct?

from 2018-2026 AA retires 52% and UAL 35%.
UAL would have to outgrow AA by close to 2% a year. Wide body or not, that seems like a hefty number to overcome.