United1 wrote:You may be thinking a little too linearly...
There are still a number of routes in the UA system where they are using an Airbus or 73G/738 simply because they don't have a larger 73E/7M9 available. Until that issue is rectified there isn't much point in growing the smaller NB fleet significantly as the capacity is already in the fleet it's just being misused a bit.
That's a good comment, so let's look at the numbers. From 1 Jan to 2012 until September 27, 2017(5.74 years) United toook delivery the 11 B737-800s they ordered after the merger and also 103 B737-900ER which average out to ~ 18 per year. Starting on 23. Apr. 2018 they have been taking delivery of the MAX jets.
From the end of 2012 to the end of 2018 he number of domestic passengers increased by 18 million annually. So it seems to me that UA domestic is just keeping up with passenger growth, and can't do much to reposition aircraft.
The average age of United single aisle jets is now slightly older than that of Delta, something that I never though I would see.
Count - Model - Average age years
72 A319-100 17.9
99 A320-200 21.0
40 737-700 20.3
141 737-800 15.4
148 737-900 7.4
56 757-200 23.2
21 757-300 16.9
577
United --
15.8 years 14 A220-100 0.3
57 A319-100 17.4
62 A320-200 23.8
83 A321-200 1.4
91 717-200 17.8
10 737-700 10.4
77 737-800 17.8
129 737-900 2.8
111 757-200 22.6
16 757-300 16.4
76 MD-88 28.5
36 MD-90 22.2
762
Delta --
15.5 yearsAt the risk of stating the obvious, to get average age you need to take the dot product of the vectors of the model count, by the vector of the model age and divide by the sum of model counts.
Delta is acquiring B737-900ERs at roughly 21 per year compared to United's 18 per year, but Delta is also acquiring A321s and has A321neos on order as well as the A220s. So the age gap is going to continue to accelerate in favor of Delta.