Originally Posted by
43Inches
I think two things are at play here, one is cheap lease 737 availability and crewing. That's holding back any major ramp up in scheduling. The air travel world recovered from Covid way faster than anyone could predict and the carnage many said would happen in airlines going broke just didn't happen and therefore there's the opposite of a glut in airliners available. VA is just lucky they were able to get most of their fleet back before Rex snaffled them up, otherwise they would have been up the creek with no boats to paddle.
The big bottle neck is heavy maintenance. Most available airframes have been in storage for 2+ years and are out of "C" check, so there's a backlog world wide.