Party on James.

 

This is pretty much what I've been talking about for months. This is fairly logical fleet plan with our system. The 777-300ER's will largely replace the 747's, with the additional orders. The 777x will start to address the age of our first batch of 777-200's. The 737Max 10 might finally be a decent replacement for the 757's. That's what it is aimed at, and what the airlines are asking for--and about the same time the rest of the 757 fleet will age out, so timing would be right.

My uneducated guess is that with the fast delivery of 300ER's, they will retire the 747's ahead of schedule. I wouldn't be surprised if the A350's got converted to A320's or A321NEO's, and we never see the A350. The 777-300's and X's are pretty much the same thing.

With the deferral of the 737-700's we still need to address the RJ conundrum. This proposal does that.

Co management and Jeffry have wanted to get rid of the PW 757's from day 1. The PS planes. The reason they hung around as long as they did was Glenn actually spent some money on winglets and some basic upgrades. They weren't that far out of compliance with the rest of the fleet. We still have plane #2, which is 1989. So with the small number of PW PS planes this move makes some sense, though I hate to see them go.

 

Skywest has E2's and MRJ's on order.
Republic has CS300s on order. (not cancelled under bankruptcy)
Transtates has MRJ's on order.

None of these aircraft can operate under current scope. Deferring 61 -700s indefinitely is disturbing. Sure would be nice to know what the plan is for replacing all the 50 seaters....since that was the stated purpose for the -700 order earlier this year.

 

Raising Arizona

 

Keeping some UAX 50 seaters around a bit longer if necessary, 50/50 orders/options for CS100/300s (probably 100s for more UAX 76 seaters), more used A319s, higher narrow body utilization proportional to demand and 55 A321s is the plan.

 

Standby for the scope trade for pay to 50% +1.

 

Not going to happen. Thankfully, we have a strong MC and an MEC that won't agree to any such thing especially after DALPA held the line.

 

Not getting 350's makes huge sense, at least to me. Flying 787,777, and 350's is just unneeded complexity.

787-10's are the timely replacement for LUAL's early Pratt powered 777's, and a bunch cheaper to operate per seat.

The rest is oure speculation, but......

Bring on the 321's.

 

The 737Max 10 isn't even a paper airplane yet. It is just an incomplete idea.

 

So is the 737-900ER and yet here we are.