Originally Posted by
Cathay Boy
For airlines in North America or CI/BR then no. But for CX who prides itself to be the best airline in the world, 10+ years is a dinosaur.
By you logic, other airlines such as QF, BA cannot be one of the best airline in the world as a large proportion of their fleet are 10+ years old (in particular, the 734s, 763s and 744s).
Originally Posted by Cathay Boy
I'm sure this is why CX and SQ seem to retire their planes so frequently on regional routes, they realized the cycles they've amassed is huge. Especially CX with the TPE-HKG golden route, and now you throw in PVG/SHA-HKG and that's a lot of cycles on a few regional planes.
I am sure most airlines realise there is need to balance out the cycles and hours between their short haul aircrafts. For example, a lot of QF's 763s are used on the SYD-MEL shuttle, but QF will sometime rotate these aircrafts for runs to/from PER from the East Coast to balance out the cycles and hours a bit.