Delta Air Lines’ fleet renewal – the A321 doesn’t quite get there

Delta Airlines has long been the US airline that flies the wings off its aircraft – they do not chase the new models at entry into service.  Over the recent years, Delta started a fleet renewal process that saw them become the C Series “anchor tenant”, now the A220.  Delta also followed up its first A321 order with a lot more.  In doing so, Delta deployed the highly effective Airbus “one-two” punch of the A220 and A321.  Let’s look at what this has brought about at the airline.

The chart comes from one of our aircraft metric models.  Looking at the X-axis which lists average seats you can quickly assess that Delta’s selection to date has been highly focused on replacing older aircraft.  The size of the balls is the number of flights, so the larger the ball, the more flights that aircraft has undertaken.  The data is through September 2021.