United Airlines boasts that it has overtaken competitors as the world’s largest carrier by fleet size after taking delivery of its 1,000th “mainline” jet.
Patrick Quayle, United’s senior vice-president of global network planning and alliances, touted the milestone delivery in a 12 February LinkedIn post. The Boeing 737 Max 9 registered as N77584 was delivered late last month.
Quayle asserts that, with the delivery, United is the “first airline ever” to reach 1,000 mainline aircraft.
“While we already hold the claim as the world’s largest airline by ASMs [available seat miles], we are now also the world’s largest airline by fleet size,” he says.
All three of American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United have claims on being the world’s largest airline by some measure. American’s fleet is larger than United’s when including regional jets, while Delta outpaces its rivals in annual revenue.
American and Delta are right behind United when it comes to the size of their mainline jet fleets. Airline Business data show Delta operating 966 narrowbody and widebody jets, in addition to 317 regional jets.
American flies the most total aircraft, with 965 mainline jets and 566 regional aircraft.
Notably, Southwest Airlines operates the largest single-type fleet with its 800-strong assembly of 737s.
But United does fly the most mainline aircraft, and expects to take deliveries of an additional 70 narrowbody and widebody aircraft this year.
United holds unfilled orders for more than 700 jets, according to aviation analytics company Cirium.
“Being the largest airline is a crown we plan on keeping,” Quayle says.
JUGGERNAUTS CREATED
American, Delta and United’s massive fleet sizes are largely the product of decades of airline consolidation, and are not necessarily reflective of a healthy and competitive airline industry.
In 2010, United itself became one of the largest airlines in the world via its acquisition of Continental Airlines, following Delta’s 2008 acquisition of Northwest Airlines. Those were the USA’s largest-ever airline tie-ups until American consumed US Airways in 2013.
Andrew Levy, chief executive of start-up carrier Avelo Airlines, recently told Airline Business that the US government allowing the creation of airline conglomerates – and the financial bailouts it handed to those companies during the Covid-19 pandemic – created the giants that are currently running away with most of the USA’s airline profits.
”The net effect of it has been that the larger airlines are now… I would argue they’re almost too big to fail,” Levy said. ”In fact, I think they are too big to fail. And they’re they’re more powerful than they’ve ever been.
”Now, you have a marketplace that’s been consolidated, where you have the top four players, or call it 70, 75% of the seats in the United States.”
