The Sneaky Ways U.S. Airlines Are Adding Capacity Without Adding Aircraft

U.S. carriers are somehow squeezing additional capacity out of existing aircraft without increasing the number of planes in their fleet.

With record numbers of passengers flying U.S. carriers, the domestic airlines are growing, but an expansion in capacity doesn’t mean a greater numbers of planes in the sky. U.S. carriers are finding creative ways to wring more capacity from the aircraft already in service — in part by packing more passengers on already cramped aircraft, replacing smaller planes with larger ones and using each of those planes to fly more daily flights.

According to a report from Dallas Morning News, the trend in the industry has shifted toward increasing capacity by using aircraft more efficiently rather than by expanding fleets. Southwest Airlines, for example, will have the same fleet size in 2015 as it did in 2014, but the airline will increase its overall capacity by around 2 percent.

“Almost all of our capacity growth domestically is about putting more seats on airplanes,” American Airlines President Scott Kirby told the audience at a JP Morgan-sponsored Aviation, Transportation & Industrials Investment Conference in New York last week. “All airlines for the most part are putting more seats on airplanes. We’re doing it. United’s doing it. Delta’s doing it. Even Southwest is continuing to put more seats on their existing aircraft.”

Delta Air Lines President Ed Bastian told conference attendees that he expects to see an even greater increase capacity to come from using aircraft more efficiently, stating: “While we’ve done a lot of upgauging in terms of getting cost efficiencies and productivity in our fleet, I still think we’re in the mid-innings of our upgauging effort.”

Airline executives believe they have found a way to grow to meet increasing demand without incurring the expense of additional aircraft. “We expect to end 2015 with fewer aircraft at the end of the year than we started the year, but we’ll still have capacity growth because we have more seats on each of the aircraft,” Kirby explained.

The Dallas Morning News notes, however, that the airlines’ quest to increase capacity has been attributed to passenger unit revenue that has remained flat and even decreased in the first quarter of this year.

[Photo: United Airlines]