Well...

https://youtu.be/jW3i6x6DbT0

I've actually heard those words almost verbatim from a former senior officer at United over a decade ago.

Meh, the letter was to every United Employee, not just the pilots, so perhaps it was meant to add a certain "folksiness" to the message.

?????Really!!!???

must be Air Force

Bottom line.....

in the last 12 months.....

65- 737-700s were ordered to "replace 50 seat RJ flying"
of those orders, 4 were converted to 800s..61 were deferred indefinitely.
Now we just signed up for 65- 50 seat RJs

Bingo.

Until we see actual mainline growth all the talk is talk and Lucy is still holding the football.

I'm cautiously optimistic that UAL is actually trying be an airline for the first time in a long time but we've also all seen this movie before.

I'll be far more comfortable with the plan when we actually see what's gonna happen (or not) with the mainline fleet plan.

Regional outsourcing's been shrinking for at least the last couple of years. I haven't checked the 2014 annual report, but regional flying shrunk in 2015 and 2106.

See page 10 (listed as page 9 on the slide) of this slide deck from a presentation 2/28/17 for 2017 forecast:
http://ir.united.com/~/media/Files/U...ation-2017.pdf

I don't expect to shrink on the RJ side as much as is listed and I hope that we'll have more mainline aircraft than the presentation indicates.

We're not adding any 50 seaters, it's just shifting. It's a net zero to the current fleet plan. Would you rather buy 65 737's we don't currently need and start losing money?

They're also going to finally start using them the way we're supposed to... on smaller cities that in no way support mainline flying. Yet. Finally ditching the stupidity of flying RJs and -8's between major hubs.

The sky isn't falling, I'm optimistic for the time being. Lot of smaller towns being added to pump passenger traffic into the system.

I've talked to a number of LCA's fairly recently (two in the past three trips). Based on the recent standards meeting cliff notes it seems (new) management didn't want to commit to 65 737-700s that were already a decade old technology and not substantially fuel effecient when newer, much more effecient technology is right around the corner. Once those 737s were on property UCH would be stuck with them for a considerable length of time and didn't want that commitment. Seemed reasonable to me from a financial standpoint.

I hope that's the true reason for the deferment. I wonder what the break even point is on a NG vs MAX though? I remember Dal years ago stating the break even point of a used MD90 (price tag +fuel) vs a new 737 NG (price tag+fuel) was something like 20 years. In other words it would take 20 years in added fuel costs from the MD to equal the bigger price tag of the new guppy. I wonder how many more millions of $ the MAX is than the last of the NG's.