This is Kirby to a T. Wishing you guys luck!

That sounds about right given the huge reduction in aircraft planned. Cautious not to over hire sounds like a good cover to tell the attendees seeing as they hadn't announced the order deferral yet.

UAL announces that they want to preserve near term CAPEX in the face of global uncertainty and get a more updated fleet in the future, and this is a bad thing how?

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Or in this case, 65 in the hand. Also more RJ's and less hiring in the meantime.

For the long term, maybe it's not a bad thing. But looking at the press releases from earlier this year, UAL ordered 40 and then another 25 700s to be delivered starting mid to late 2017 to "reduce it's 50 seat fleet of RJs by more than half by 2019". So, what are they going to do to cut the RJs now? Buy the CS100? E2? Buy more used 737s/A319s? Keep the RJs? It certainly raises questions.

The only hope is the veiled reference in the release about continuing to work in the used aircraft market. Hopefully they have a line on some other used jets. In the actual presentation you see a reference to the number of aircraft that are unencumbered going from 250 aircraft now to 450 aircraft by 2020. The graph still shows the total aircraft planned for the fleet growing, but they emphasize that the number of unencumbered aircraft grows by even more giving them greater flexibility if they should need to downsize.

With that, I would assume that they are looking for any used plane they could get a hold of that doesn't come with a long term commitment.

If they have a line on some of those, then this could be ok. If they are just hoping to come across some, then this is of much greater concern.

Best guess is an order after the first of the year of a SNB thus allowing more lift at mainline, and if I'm not mistaken allows United to increase the number of large RJ's. Further down the line wouldn't be surprised to see some combo of less 737, more Airbus's. Either new or used depending on the economy. If new at this point they would be foolish not to wait for the Max and NEO respectively in terms of fuel economy.


So yeah basically what you said :)

Article in WSJ yesterday made clear The Street has full heat on UAL to close operational and quality gap with Delta. Keep a bunch of ** 50 and even 70 seaters won't do that. Nice play Kirby. Good to see you arrive throwing a bomb.

Its not a bad thing as long as they use the money to put UNITED in a better position going forward instead of the share holders that have already been taken care of to the tune of $6 billion. The hedge funds on our board were probably pushing for this.

My hope is that this opens the door to a 100 seater.......we need one we have a huge capacity gap between our large RJs and 737/319.

UA has been beating the drum about buying used 737s and A320s for awhile now, but it seems to be excruciatingly slow. Over the past couple years, what have they been able to get? A handful of ex-COPA 737s, and a couple of ex-China Southern A319s?