xliioper

The only aircraft that are being retired at this point are the 76 MD88/90's (in June) and 18 777's (by end of year). That's a pretty small part of their fleet. It's not like DL is the only airline retiring fleets --

Newsroom - A fond farewell to five fantastic fleets - American Airlines Group, Inc.

CMK10

While technically true, Delta has also indicated it doesn't expect to return half of the 717s to service and that they also expect to trim the 757, 767 and A-320 fleets.

ethernal

Yes, with the caveat that all of those are options that can be leveraged in response to demand. The MD-88 was always doomed given that they were planned to be retired at the end of the year anyways, and the MD-90s were always on thin ice and been a bit of a red-headed stepchild of Delta. The 717s are only soft doomed because of the airworthiness directive regarding their seats - but that is not until 2022 so Delta has plenty of time to revisit based on how demand evolves.

The biggest structural fleet issue Delta is facing right now is a dramatic increase in labor costs which will always favor larger aircraft over smaller aircraft. Outside of voluntary early retirement, Delta is forced to layoff / furlough the least senior (read: cheapest) pilots first. If they need to reduce their pilot pool by 30%, their labor unit costs just increased 12%. So that is one of the reasons (beyond the seats) that the 717 is in trouble.

cmd320

I’m not sure about the 767 but the 757 fleet seems to be pretty active right now. Hopefully that’s a sign that DL enjoys having them around and the will stay for a while. Definitely enjoy boarding through 2L, especially now.

rylan

Well, in terms of cutting too many flights... am looking to book a trip on AA now since DL is only giving me two options that aren't 'sold out' and those are both expensive Y fare tickets and have poor connections.

MCO Flyer

I’d assume most of the 757s will stick around for the time being. The only ones that will probably permanently be parked are the 20 or so that were scheduled to be retired 3-4 years ago, but received a life extension (I believe ship #s 659-684).

DLASflyer

I have looked at many different destinations from my home airport (JAC) in July and there is simply no inventory in any cabin for the entire month. Is the Delta website broken or are all these flights really sold out? Looking at what would normally be one stop itineraries such as JAC-SLC-BOS or JAC-SLC-WAS.

xliioper

Combination of seat blocking and limited flights (JAC-SLC is only 2x and SLC-BOS is only 1x vs. normal 4x and 3x daily) and rev management systems aren't really handling it well. As you get closer in, availability tends to open up as people cancel flights. There's availability on JAC-SLC-BOS on everyday for the next two weeks. Going east-to-west is easier to find options than west-to-east because of timezone changes. There availability on JAC-DCA on most Thursday's and Friday's in July and some Wednesday's an Saturday's as well. Sun-Tue departures are all pretty much sold-out.

vinnmann

I think they may have overcut too much. I referenced in another thread my first non-business booking coming up. I was looking to go to MCO-MKE-MCO over the 4th of July. Normally, I would spend the $500-$600 for an A fare. However, fares up front are over $800 and between $500-$600 in back and the times & connections are not great. WN has non-stops to MKE and back for $200 and they are limiting sales so middle seats can be free. With the limited service and middle seats blocked, spending $600 more and connecting is not worth it. I also noted that today, WN has over 50 flights from MCO to 26 different destinations. DL has 8 flights to 4 destinations and half of the flights are to ATL. I am not sure if this is due to WN's wanting to keep things bookable (build it and they will come mentality) or if their route system gets more effected vs. DL. It is much simpler for DL to cancel an ATL-MCO-ATL flight than it is for WN to cancel a flight XYZ-MCO when WN's bird will then go MCO-BUF-DEN-SAN-DEN-CEG. For the purposes of this thread, I realize comparing DL with WN is not apples to apples, but it is the only recent data point I have.

ab2013

Long live the 757!

spongenotbob

That is a great insight! Looking at what’s left of my summer trips, all my westbound trips are on DL, all eastbound returns have migrated to WN. Uncanny.

MCO Flyer

I think the MD-88/90 retirement is actually somewhat making the June schedule worse. Almost all routes in May out of ATL that were operated by MD-88/90s were replaced by 717s, meaning every ex-MD-88 flight now has 40 less seats than it did in May. In order to have enough 717s to cover old MD-88/90 flights out of ATL, DL took all 717s out of DTW and replaced them with CR9s. DL probably should have brought back some of its A320s (all of which are currently parked) to replace the former MD-88/90 flights for June.

cmd320

I think DL has significantly underestimated the rebound for demand in June. A concourse SkyClub was packed yesterday the two times I visited.

MCO Flyer

It still seems strange why almost all MD-88 routes were downgraded to 717s. I might need to fly to MEM again at the end of the month and I had no issues getting a flight out of MEM last month when MEM-ATL on the MD-88. Now that it’s all 717, it’s nearly impossible to find a seat due to the seat caps limiting the 717 flights to around ~60 people vs the MD-88 which allowed around ~90.

cmd320

Yes it's definitely a significant reduction in capacity on many routes throughout the Southeast and Florida. My guess is that DL did not expect traffic to rebound as much as it has when they made the decision to retire the MDs on 6/2. If they had I would think some A320s would have been reactivated to fill in the gaps.