After the COVID-19 pandemic, and the crap that went on for the last year, United Airlines is one of few to return to profitability. With that, they recently unveiled, not only an improved cabin and new/more premium seats, but an order for 270 new and way more fuel efficient aircraft! Take a look at what they ordered! This order should be a nice compromised discussion for our community, as it includes both MAX and NEO aircraft!
Aircraft
# Ordered
Boeing 737 MAX 10
150
Boeing 737 MAX 8
50
Airbus A321NEO
70
Also announced, a new and improved cabin will be retrofitted onto older aircraft
Included in the new statement, was part saying: “The airline also announced a hiring spree that it expects to total about 25,000 employees for the new planes, including pilots, flight attendants and mechanics” (Leslie Josephs, CNBC).
Finally, it looks like seatback entertainment systems (also known as IFE), are making a comeback, as all new aircraft, and retrofitted aircraft, will be receiving generously sized screens for you to watch movies in flight!
I could understand the Airbus order if the went for more XLRs or some LRs, but in my opinion, the standard A321neo is too similar to the MAX10 for it to make sense to order it.
The thing I would like to say is that the A321NEO order to me makes sense, as when you work out the math the A321NEO fleet will have an awfully similar amount of seats to the existing A320-200 fleet, so I think United intends on upgrading their fleet by retiring the older A320 and replacing them with the newer A321NEO, similar to what they are doing with the 737NG and 737-MAX
By the way their 772s are incredibly old, they have to replace them - best solution is A359 which is very similar in terms of capacity etc. However they delayed the deliveries to 2027