That doesn't sound right to me. Our European aircraft run round trips in a day. They leave PHL or CLT at night flying redeyes and arriving in Europe early in the morning. Then they get serviced and provisioned, and make the return trip beginning in the early afternoon, return stateside in the afternoon. They get serviced again and do the same thing all over. So why would we need two aircraft for every city pair?
I think the actual number of widebodies, when all is said and done, is supposed to be 41 (19 320's and 22 350's, plus possibly some of all of the 767's should they decide to use them for Hawaii or the Caribbean or for high traffic city pairs in the states). It makes no sense to replace the 330's any time soon.
I was refering to the India, China, Japan flights. Just 12 Hour each way would need 2.
It seems highly unlikely that the 767s will still be around when all the 350s have arrived. They will be quite old and relatively inefficient. So that puts the widebodies at 42 max. I suspect that the plan is to retire the 333s after a sufficient number of 350s arrive but hold open the option of keeping them if they can be profitably deployed. US can certainly expand their international presence but I have a hard time seeing them more than double that part of the business.
