Originally Posted by
readywhenyouare
I think UA, AS, ans WN have the right idea. They're not doing any mass fleet retirements. It's better to keep airplanes and layoff pilots temporarily. It's far easier to bring those two things back quickly when the recovery hits. DL will be out of luck. DL will have no planes and their pilots will be furloughed far longer because of that decision to permanently remove fleets. UA, AS, and WN can just pull aircraft from storage. DL won't have that option.
Strongly disagree. DL has publicly stated that these moves are going to put them in a position to be breakeven from a cashflow perspective by the end of the year. That's the most prudent business decision you can make in this environment. Not to mention stating an intent to retire a fleet and actually retiring the fleet are two different things. DL can state their intention to retire parts of the A320 and 763ER fleets, but if a vaccine is found tomorrow and there is a sudden surge in bookings from September onwards, they can reverse that decision.
That said, Bastian is pretty clear in his statements that he believes the market is 2+ years away from returning to a stable place and this is the most prudent decision in his eyes to keep the business he runs afloat. Remember he was the CFO went DL went through bankruptcy before -- this isn't his first rodeo, he seems to be taking the right set of actions to keep his company afloat in the short-term without overly burdening the long-term with expensive assets or debts that require bankruptcy to shed. As for the others
WN is screwed the moment they have to start taking delivery of their 737Max order that have been sitting on the runway in Washington for the past few months and unless there is a surge in capacity will either need to quickly retire planes or find a way to defer that order.
AS is in a position to return most of the Airbus fleet they inherited from Virgin American if the turnaround drags on and they also have some 737Max planes that they haven't had to take delivery of yet
UA has stated they are looking to furlough 40%+ of their staff, not sure how that differs from what DL is doing -- both companies will see vast numbers of pilots lose their type ratings and require time for re-certification if/when the time comes to re-activate them. UA hasn't made any firm decisions but I don't think anyone would be surprised to see them retire parts of the 757 and 767 fleets
Originally Posted by
Dawgfan6291
MD88s with IFE, A350s on RDU-CDG....
Some of y'all need to settle down.
Its pretty simple, young 763s flow down to replace old 763s, 764/332s replace those 763s, 333/339s replace the 764s/332s replacing the 763s.
All of this in a time where, you likely wont see whatever stays for the international fleet completely pulled from storage for at least a year or more and plenty of 339 and 359s on order to fill any short term needs. On top of that Delta has plenty of routes that saw smaller aircraft that could have seen larger aircraft, had Delta had them. Delta's management team is well aware of the size difference between the 763 and 339.
Depends on how far they cut into the 763 fleet on retirement. There is certainly a gap if they retire all the 763s and I was simply pointing out that for a route like RDU - CDG there is a short-term answer (752) but if you take the 763 fleet our, the long term answer at the moment becomes something like the A333/A359 both of which are too much plane for that route leaving a gap in the fleet at the moment.