Airline fleets are growing larger and larger and United Airlines just took delivery of their 1,000th “mainline” jet, giving them official bragging rights to having the “world’s largest” mainline fleet. Not just that, but they are the first to hit the 1,000 (mainline) aircraft milestone ever. By mainline fleet, we’re excluding smaller regional aircraft operating on behalf of the airline, but not actually operated by the airline.
The aircraft that bagged them the top (we should say biggest) spot is a Boeing 737-9 MAX, registration N77584. It joined the United ranks in January, and according to our tracking data, conducted its first revenue flight at the beginning of February.
United might have the biggest mainline fleet, but American’s overall fleet, including all the regionals, still surpasses them and Delta takes in more annual revenue. Southwest still has the largest single-type fleet with their 800 Boeing 737s.
You can keep up to date on fleets through Flightradar24 by searching for an airline and then clicking “Show fleet”. You can also see how many mainline aircraft each airline has in the air at any given time by setting a filter for each airline and choosing the “Operating as” button on the airline filter.
Who is flying all those planes?
Let’s talk about what the pilot requirements are first. United Airlines needs their first officer applicants to have 1,500 hours total time. This is the regulatory minimum in the US, and realistically, given the number of applicants, more is probably better. They also ask for 1,000 hours turbine time and a minimum of 100 hours in the last 12 months. Delta asks for basically the same, but has a few additional boxes to tick like 50 hours multi-engine time and a few other minor points. American doesn’t seem to have their requirements ‘out in the open’ but we can assume much the same.
In 2023, there were 12,193 new pilots hired across 13 US airlines. Delta took the most with a total of 2,424 newly employed pilots. In 2023, the latest year for which data is available, United had 15,445 pilots, Delta had over 17,000 and American around 18,837.
They are all getting bigger
All of the big three have orders for more aircraft as they look to expand. Delta is focusing on its wide body, long haul fleet with orders in for A330-900neo and A350, while its narrow-body fleet expands with larger orders for the Airbus A220 and A321neo and Boeing 737-10 MAX. American has both A321XLRs and Boeing 787-9s on order, and aside from the certification of the 737-10 MAX, United is also waiting on mid- and long-haul aircraft including A321neos, A321XLRs and Boeing 787s.
United currently serves the most passenger destinations, but the American Airlines group hits the highest figures in terms of passengers carried (and overall employees).
Their world domination is being challenged though. Turkish Airlines currently flies to the most countries, and Ryanair is quickly catching up with them on passenger numbers. In case you’re wondering, in 2022, American carried some 199 million people, Delta 175 million and Ryanair came in third globally with 168 million.
So when you’re tracking the aircraft, you can picture all the people inside, too…
Will the biggest keep getting bigger?
All these airlines have reached these behemoth sizes through years and years of consolidation with other smaller airlines. Take United’s ingestion of Continental in 2010, and the enormous American Airlines absorption of US Airways in 2013, or the continued consolidation in Europe into large airline blocs amongst Lufthansa Group, Air France-KLM, and IAG. With no signs of consolidation abating, we can expect to see even larger fleets in the future.
