vinnmann

With all of the changes in the fleet plans, I thought it may be fun to have a consolidated thread for fleet discussion and playing armchair fleet manager. Mods, feel free to correct me if I am wrong. Overall, have been impressed with the hard product DL provides. They have been good at making old planes feel new again. A prime example was flying on a MD-88 with DL where the cabin looked as if it was relatively new and connecting on to a 753 with large IFE screens. This is a direct contrast to flights on other legacy carriers that were dirty with no IFE and loose panels. Each airline has hundreds of planes, so perhaps I just get lucky on DL and unlucky on others. YMMV. Here are some of my thoughts on the DL fleet:

Widebody:
The 777 retirement has a whole thread devoted to it, but I was surprised to learn of its demise. However, with fewer seats and higher operating costs than the A359, it seems like the right plane to eliminate when downsizing. Could the fact that the LR's have GE engines and the ER's have Rolls creating two subfleets been an issue? It may not since DL Techops serves other airlines and may be servicing both engine types anyway.

Since DL has shown they can get the D1 suite in an A330, what is the chance they will be upgrading the current 332 & 333's to have the suite? Some of them are approaching 17-18 years in age, but with the fewer cycles of longhaul, most of them have well more than 50% of their life left. I realize that DL has to squeeze every penny these days, but spending a couple hundred million (only a week of cash burn at today's rate) over a few years to upgrade the fleet and align the products seems like a decent business plan to me. I think product commonality is important which is why I won't buy a seat in J on AF.

Most people seem to like the A359 and it will obviously be a big part of DL's future longhaul product. I don't think I am the only one wondering if they will be removing a row of seats and adding a C+ cabin. In the smaller Y cabin, they could go from 10 rows with 31-32" pitch to 9 rows with 34-35". If they can charge greater than 11% more for the C+, it will be a net increase in revenue. Plus 9 less meals to serve and fewer potential bags to handle. Although, maybe the meal and bag handling cost would be offset by more amenities for C+ over Y.

So what will be happening with the 763ER's? The 763 seats between 208 and 226 and the replacement widebodies on order seat 281 or 306. That is a lot more seats to fill on each flight if they are replaced on a 1 to 1 basis. I can see how they can absorb the extra seats by reducing a frequency for flights from hubs to LON, CDG, or AMS because they have many flights a day. For example, if there are 4 arrivals into AMS from BOS & JFK combined using 763's, there are a total of around 900 seats per day. This could be done with 3 flights with the new Airbus birds. It doesn't seem that difficult to feed more people to BOS or JFK depending on which had the frequency cut. I am not so sure how they absorb the extra seats on routes like ATL-STR or JFK-LIS where they only have one or two flights ex-LIS/STR per day. Is there are good direct replacement for the 763's? How much longer can DL realistically keep flying these aircraft? For the ones delivered in the late 90's It would seem they have another 10 years left, so could those those 763's get the suites like the 764's?

The 764's with the new J cabin seem to have found their niche on the TATL routes that have high J demand.

Narrowbody:

The Mad Dogs also have their own thread, but deserve an honorable mention. DL kept these birds in good shape and I enjoyed flying them. Nice and quiet in the front with the engines and wings so far behind.

I read that they are eliminating the 737-700. For pilot rating and maintenance, it seems to be no different than a 738. So why get rid of it? Since there are only 10 in the fleet, I suppose eliminating it makes it easier for scheduling.

738's and 739's. DL seems to own a lot of them and they are going to keep flying 'em. Fortunately, DL seems to keep them in good conditions.

A319 & A320 are getting old. IIRC, these are ex-NW equipment. It is my understanding these are being replaced with A220 and A321. Between the A220, A321, 738 and 739, there are plenty of scheduling options for narrowbody range and capacity.

Where does the 717 fit? With more and more A220 coming online, I can see the desire to use it over the 717 for efficiency as they have similar capacity. If DL has to reorganize at some point, the 717 is an ideal candidate to be eliminated since most are leased. I have heard rumors of some sort of lease cancellation deal if DL commits to the MAX, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

For the non international 757's, they are getting old and are good candidates to be replaced by the A321. For the international versions, they are also getting old, but again, DL is keeping them in good shape. They obviously are valuable to DL as they brought the PDL hard landing plane back to life and fulfill a specific mission. The only real direct replacement in capacity and range is the A321LR/ULR. With so many 321's on order, it seems plausible to convert a few to LR/ULR.