Is Delta Recalling Fleet From Victorville Into Service?
 

I noticed this morning that an ancient DL 757 N675DL arrived in ATL after storage in Victorville since March. It is currently being towed but not certain if to gates or maintenance.Could DL be adding capacity to their fleet that was in storage?

Don't really see any evidence of capacity upgrades in the schedules. Note that domestic schedules are mostly just placeholders for anything 2+ months out -- once they get closer to finalizing the schedule for a month (generally about a month out before the start of a new month), they do a big dump of schedule cuts on Schedule Change Saturday. They've been following this pattern consistently since Covid hit. Most likely, they are just rotating aircraft around to avoid expenses on aircraft that are coming up on heavy maintenance.

Likely just rotating some aircraft in and some back out. This has been common throughout the year.

Yes, there is no indication that Delta is going to make any major near-term schedule changes that would indicate a need for more frames. In fact, the most recent passenger trends (based on TSA throughput data) reached an inflection point about 10 days ago - the 7-day YoY average has dropped from 38% to 34% and the 30-day YoY average has ticked down by 1% (after a pretty steady rise from end of September onwards). Clearly demand is being tempered by the resurgence and - barring control measures - I don't see why this trend wouldn't continue through the winter months (and, optimistically, with a strong recovery starting in the Spring).

That said, Thanksgiving could be interesting as it will draw a lot of new travelers out - and COVID has made travel demand forecasting challenging as the majority of bookings are now made close-in. It is entirely possible that Delta is looking at options to maintain capacity flexibility in the coming weeks.

"Control measures" frequently involve stay-in-place orders (mask compliance is already quite high -- a universal requirement is not going to change much) which also significantly depresses travel demand. Yes, travel demand will start to resume once stay-in-place is over and virus numbers go down, but then you will likely just go through the same cycle once again. Don't really see anything other than effective vaccine that can truly bring back demand on a long-term basis (maybe herd immunity, but it seems there's much uncertainty where exactly that point lies).

All anecdotal evidence, but from friends/family/coworkers, everyone I have spoken with is being extremely cautious for Thanksgiving. Many have said they will take any risk necessary for Christmas:eek: Our neighbors put up their Christmas decorations before Halloween. I expect Thanksgiving flight demand to be below expectations, but Christmas travel may approach normal levels. Having done a small amount of travel now, I feel a lot more comfortable traveling and figure it will probably be the same for anyone traveling around Thanksgiving. Anyone who flies for Thanksgiving will also fly for Christmas. I expect a lot of minds to change between now and the holidays - I feel for the person whose job it is to schedule aircraft. All the people booking flights at the last minute and cancelling at the last minute will make things interesting. If I were DL, I would want as many a/c available as possible.

Fair enough - your guess is as good as mine. I think the short of it is, no one really knows - Thanksgiving bookings are only now starting to solidify, and even then, the news cycle could potentially shift back to COVID between now and the 26th as things continue to worsen. I think the positive vaccine news may actually result in a surprise decline of traffic - if only because folks are more likely to say "if I just wait 4-6 months, this is over" as opposed to the "there is no end in sight, I might as well travel now."

Regardless, the point is, uncertainty rules. Maybe the pent-up travel demand and desire to see family trumps negative COVID news - or maybe things get so bad by Christmas that state-level lockdowns inhibit travel (e.g. like New York State's). It's impossible to say at this point.

Could there be some expensive maintenance requirements if a commercial airliner stays parked for too long? If so, it could be cost effective to rotate the fleet.

Short answer is yes but I believe that planes that were sent to Victorville were all prepped for long term storage (it's traditional long term desert storage and not the ad hoc post-pandemic storage of a lot of planes). They get sealed up and special preservation fluid is put in place of the standard oil among other things.

There was an effort to rotate planes earlier on in the pandemic that were short parked at random airports (e.g. Birmingham) to avoid the re-introduction inspections but this is on a much shorter term basis.. I believe that rolling the tires and starting up the engine weekly prolongs the cycle but at some point they have to be in the air to avoid additional maintenance. I'm not an expert here though so someone with more knowledge than me would need to chime in on this.

It must suck to not live in a leisure destination. ATL-MCO is almost back to pre-covid capacity. At least as far as frequency goes.

I would imagine it has its ups and downs. Lounges at JFK are very pleasant right now.

Looks like it is currently 12x daily, going to 14x daily in December, and 16x starting Jan 11th (likely still placeholder). Quite a few 767's in the mix in December while Jan is currently all 757's. DTW goes from 4x in Nov, to 5x in Dec, to 7x in Jan and has a couple daily 767's in December.

Interestingly AA is running 4x 777 (amongst other flights) on MCO-DFW in December. I believe it’s 2x77W and 2x772.

Lots of Orlando traffic this year.

Is the Mouse immune to COVID-19?

No, but he doesn't require you take a test before coming for a visit (nor stay in your hotel room for 14 days upon arrival) :)