Delta Air Lines (DL) has begun the process of reactivating both narrowbody and widebody aircraft to its active fleet in recent days.
The move comes amid Delta increasing daily flight volumes to cope with rising demand in air travel throughout the United States in the wake of the COVID-19 virus.
While Delta has already relaunched many routes and increased frequencies on countless others for the month of June, it is its July schedule that will require more active airframes to operate.
Delta plans on operating twice the number of domestic flights in July as it did in May, according to the airline’s CEO, Ed Bastian.
On the widebody front, Delta appears to be reactivating the remainder of its Airbus A350-900 fleet from storage in Blytheville, Arkansas (BYH). Speculation exists, however, that some of these frames may soon return to storage after regular maintenance.
This past Friday and Saturday, the carrier flew four Airbus A350s from storage in Blytheville to its Detroit and Minneapolis-St.Paul hubs.
Delta chose not to comment to Airways on the short-term plans for these four aircraft.
Coincidentally, Blytheville is the very same airport that Delta flew its retired McDonnell-Douglas MD-88 and MD-90 fleet to last week.
In recent weeks, Delta has used its A350 fleet to operate a variety of missions, including scheduled passenger flights, cargo-only flights, and military charters…
