shoelu

The post below is from another forum. Also, SWA has 36 firm orders in 2015.


From Flight Ops Training Topics 02/14.

Retiring Classics 2014: 1-300, 3-500's
Retiring NG's 2014: 0
New NG's acquired 2014: 33-800's
Used NG's acquired 2014: 20-700's

Net change 737's 2014: Plus 49

I know we added 20 new 800's in 2013 but am not sure of net retirements that year.

Delta's published acceptance schedule shows 36 717's transitioning in 2014. Even if you add that to the 16 delivered in 2013, that's a total of 52 delivered to Delta in 2013-14.

Woodbourne

Shoe,
Once the 717's go away we will be "short" 35 airframes. If you factor in hull conversions ceasing and increase utilization, I can see how they can cover the flying. Either way very little if any hiring next year and no "explosive growth". All subject to change tomorrow

REF 5

Couple of things.

Staffing is a function of block hrs and no so much air frames. Their are a lot of inefficiencies due to flying two separate airlines. Especially on the Airtran side. Utilization per day on average is down quite a bit at Airtran. Its even more pronounced as each fleet shrinks. Airtran still has close to 50 aircraft still flying, so it will bring down the averages. Some airplanes are flying less than 8 hrs a day. I would assume also block hrs are somewhat down at SWA because they keep increasing stage lengths and trips are down over 5% from last yr. Normal would be pushing 11 hrs a day per aircraft. On top of that SWA has on average an extra 15 airplanes per month out service due to conversions all through 2014 plus all the regular scheduled mx. The CFO and Gary Kelly already said that they will have a base line of 695 aircraft. Last qtr SWA was using 683 aircraft in their operating metrics.

Bottom line is they have a lot flexibility with their fleet to increase utilization without increasing fleet size. Their are lots of used 700's sitting on the ramp in PAE waiting to be converted that are NOT Airtran. Most likely they will replace classics. Don't read too much into how many air frames SWA has as much as how much block hrs will/will not increase next yr. That's where you will get upgrades/new hire projections from.

WHACKMASTER

Speaking of used NGs out in Seattle. I keep hearing that there are quite a few sitting out there indeed. Does anybody have anymore info on those? Numbers? SWA bound?

REF 5

I just did a conversion flight a few weeks ago to PAE. I counted at least 7 airplanes that are SWA waiting to go into conversion. ATS said that their are more to come. Plus all the Airtran conversions, it's a busy place. Aircraft are from all over the world. Airlines I never heard of. I did see a couple of Alaska 700's which were the only ones I recognized.

WHACKMASTER

Hmmm. So why is the company keeping all hush hush about all this? (Don't forget to capitalize that T

REF 5

I don't think they are keeping it a secret. It really doesn't mean anything. Doesn't really matter if the airplanes are used to grow or replace. At the end of the day it will be block hrs that dictate hiring/upgrades. They have much slack in the system to add plenty of block hrs with current aircraft. You can go on SWALife under tech ops and look at the fleet balance sheet yourself. I think as someone said in this thread, we have a training bubble but we will have also have a mx/conversion bubble coming too, with lots of spares to use. Lets just hope network planning puts those airplanes to good use. More importantly they make us money.

AirTran

Woodbourne

I agree with your block hour analysis. To take a slightly different look, after perusing the q2 earnings call,asm's are projected to be flat through 2015. Also, Gary Kelly stated in the investor calls for Q2 earnings and at the labor briefing that it is SWA?s intent to return to a fleet size of 685 or nearly so aircraft by the close of 2015 through the acquisition of used -700?s in the open market. Again equaling FLAT block hours

Guess my point is that someone recently in this thread felt that the recent hiring was for "bubbles" and no real growth in block hours equating to possible furloughs. While I still feel furloughs will not happen, us junior guys need real growth and real street hiring

WHACKMASTER

Wait a minute! Whatever happened to growth after hitting the magical 15% ROIC mark?! Surely GK wouldn't lie to us would he?

REF 5

Actually, this what GK said in 2nd qtr CC.

"And then finally, our third quarter earnings outlook is strong. That, of course, is at this point in time. We'll continue to closely monitor our results and our outlook, the economy and fuel prices as we now contemplate reasoned and measured available seat mile growth beginning in 2015."

And this is the important part's from the CFO

"And that brings me to the fleet, and I'll refer you to our press release for our second quarter activity. But here's a quick recap of our full year 2014 fleet plans. We have 33 firm orders for 737-800 from Boeing and plan to add at least 17 preowned 737-700. We've removed 41 of the AirTran 717s from service. The remaining 47 will be removed from service by the end of this year."

"Our fleet plans still includes managing to a relatively flat fleet through the end of 2015 with a baseline of roughly 695 aircraft, which, again, was our combined fleet at the time of the AirTran acquisition."

"And again for 2015, we expect our available seat miles to increase year-over-year, and that's driven by the 2% to 3% increase expected in seats from the updating of our fleet, along with the higher utilization of our fleet post-integration. 2015 ASMs are also expected to grow from a longer stage length on the new flights at Love Field, DCA, LaGuardia and new international flying from Houston."

Most airlines staff for the peak block hrs. Which is usually the July time frame. Since Network planning has not released the schedule for next summer(usually six to seven months in advance) we won't know till probably late this yr or early in 2015 to see what staffing is going to be required.

It seems that they will grow ASM's. They have to keep costs in line. Especially when CASM is running 3%-4% per qtr. The other question, it seems that the "trips flown" on the operating stats from the income statement keep going down. Which indicates that replacement of 117/122 seat aircraft with 143/175 seat aircraft, less frequency per city pairs on some routes. To me, what's the retirement schedule for the classics between now and 2017 when the first max comes. They started putting those new overhead bins in some of the classics which may indicate those airplanes may be around a while. We'll just add to the rumorville I guess.