Maybe. ..or maybe it will?

It’s possible we’ll see an order for an airplane which doesn’t exist yet (A350 cargo, B777-X, etc) - which would give lots of “what if” options for a launch-customer.

- Economy tanks? Defer deliveries for many years without any or very low penalties.
- Deliveries take longer than expected? Replace the ordered jets with airframes already built (767, A330) at hugely discounted rates and/or penalties payable by Airbus/Boeing.

Does the 10 airframe A380s order ring a bell? Money talks and ordering a jet which doesn’t exist gives end-product businesses (brown, purple, yellow, blue, etc) tremendous leverage over Boeing and Airbus. ..and within a decade Embraer might be part of the equation too (757 replacements?). ..another decade later probably Comac as well (“wanna keep doing business in China? Buy our jets.”)

Of course I don’t. But, given available info, would you place a bet on Carol Davis placing a net growth airplane order? I would definitely not hold my breath. In fact, I would even place a small bet on them not making up their mind and disposing of the MD fleet without a replacement, ie, shrink.

Only if they can find a better way to move the volume. Thome wants to improve margins by not chasing low margin, high volume customers. Amazon is the poster child for that type of customer. Total profit is still a percentage of total revenue. She doesn’t want to see that number shrink. Wall Street hates shrinking revenue. I see us potentially ordering new jets to replace the MD with numerous options to enable the company to tailor the order as market conditions dictate.

To update this post: The CEO shared with the IPA that the company is looking to add roughly 14 more tails on top of previously announced growth by the end of 2023 and in addition to any MD replacement order. No announcements on what airframes and certainly no publicly announced orders at this point, but it’s possible that Davis 2.0 will wind up presiding over a period of significant growth despite her very publicly stated desire to focus on “better not bigger”. My personal opinion is that we will grow as needed to meet the demand of customers who are willing to pay a premium for our services as we slowly offload larger less profitable customers. That high quality demand is simply greater than the CEO first thought it would be when she was focused on cutting capex to focus on profitability.

Bet she wishes she had not given up those last 4 747s or the last 3 LH MD11s

Very doubtful. 4 engines = climate destroyer for the woke crowd which is Tomé’s audience.

In all seriousness I believe she’s preparing us for the eventual inevitable divorce from our parasitic spouse - Ms. amazonia.
We’re still growing and will probably order new airplanes but we’re shedding low yield, amazon-type of customers. For now we’re still carrying their goods because of the sheer amount of volume (35-55% depending on the time of the year).
Once we cut them or they cut us loose expect our growth to stagnate for a while.

https://ajot.com/news/airbus-freight...eye-new-planes

https://seekingalpha.com/news/373039...-dhl-bloomberg

From the first article,

"Israel Aerospace Industries, one of the world’s biggest conversion specialists, said this week that it had begun making modifications on its first passenger Boeing 777-300 jetliner, a process that will take about 130 days to repurpose it for freight."

That's still my bet.........

Seems that there is a discrepancy between what our CFO said on the earnings call and what our CEO told the EB. That said, I don’t think there’s a realistic path to getting the planes Thome said we wanted in the timeframe she mentioned. Even if we could, our training center can’t keep up with already scheduled growth and would be beyond hopelessly swamped by 14 additional jets coming on property next year.

Isnt just tne 747 swamped? I think we could easily handle more MDs or 767s