LY777

Hi
some of LY 738s are getting old.
what is LY plan for their narrow body fleet?

rafi2k6

There is no plan.

Since they can't afford to buy C-Series / A220 for both financial & political reasons, you can be 99.9% sure that when the time times they'll place an order for 737-Max series aircraft.
Unfortunate as the A220 & A321LR or XLR would suit them perfectly.

LY fleet will continue to be all Boeing for the foreseeable future.
737-8 & 737-9 for narrowbody
787-8 & 787-9 for widebody.
Maybe we'll see them get a few 787-10 for trunk routes to New York / Newark, London, Paris & Bangkok but I doubt even that will happen.

N830MH

And 777X, as well. Will they ever order the 777X? lots of people who are going to Israel. The flight always full everyday. For EWR, JFK, LHR, MIA to TLV. They need more demand, still have more demand.

787-9 is not right aircraft. They should ordering the 777-9X. They need more aircraft, adding more new routes, new narrowbody.

They should orders the 737-MAX9 or -MAX10. It is time to order a new aircraft. The 738 is getting too old.

momoflyingguy

This reminds me of Iran under the sactions. And DPRK.

entropy

If the 220 was still officially Canadian, that'd probably be easier... but they have a US production line so it probably would be politically OK.

elal767

Basically, there’s some serious consideration inside the company to get rid of most of the 738s. This was almost a done deal about a year ago, but the current spike in demand has put those plans on hold for now.
The 739 is doing great as a work horse for the company, not to mention that the hard product (including WiFi and all) is more than competitive to what most of their competitors offer to Europe these days.
Regarding the 787-9, LY is actually very, very happy with them, there are few Boeing customers that are able to squeeze as much revenue out of those as LY during peak season to North America.
The company fully understands that their biggest challenge is EK‘s entry to the market which has the potential to kill big parts of their business to the east, especially for almost all destinations that require connections (think Manila, Singapore, Tokyo, AU, NZ, etc.)
Let see what Biden‘s visit to the region gets us in this regard.
None of the above matters if they can’t get their pilot Union to play ball, obviously. I’m as much of an LY fanboy as you can be these days, but after I’ve had my third paid C ticket cancelled within hours from departure (and no call center to provide a solution without pulling strings), I’m officially done flying with these clowns for this year.

rafi2k6

You make some interesting points.

I was not aware of the plan to dump the 738's. Were they to be replaced with additional 739's?
I mean, I suppose it could be a good move- higher capacity = lower CASM. I guess they could replace the 15 738's + 8 739's with 25 - 30 737-MAX9's eventually?

I'm not shocked that the 789's are working out well for LY, it's a right-sized aircraft for their needs. In other discussions, I've sometimes made the argument that a small sub-fleet of 787-10 could be useful for trunk routes, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

All that being said, It's still a shame that LY cannot realistically order any C-Series / A220 aircraft, I feel like the lower capacity and ultra-efficiency of those machines could allow them to more profitably operate more destinations, year-round. Oh well.

elal767

787-10 is a fair point but it would just introduce more complexity. Even the 787-8 was a point of contention, however it has proven to be a life saver when it allowed them to continue operating routes that had high premium demands and lower LFs in Y. Add to that the significantly lower cost of purchase on the -8

The A220s are actually too small to be a good fit for LY. The biggest advantage of the 737-900ER is that when all is done and said, it can also do serious GW loads to further destinations like RAK. Long term that means they’ll find themselves buying MAXes, but that’s still at least a decade away imho.