United Flies 1,143 Mainline Jets, the Most of Any US Airline. American Still Has More Planes

United Airlines has 1,575 planes. That is the count in its third-quarter results for September 30, 2026: 1,143 mainline jets plus 432 regional jets flying as United Express.

No other US airline flies as many mainline jets. Count the regional fleets too, though, and American Airlines comes out ahead, which is why this question has more than one answer online.

How Many Planes Does United Have?

1,575, as of September 30, 2026. The count covers every mainline aircraft United operates, owned or leased, plus the regional jets that partner carriers fly for it under contract.

It leaves out the 552 aircraft United has on firm order. A year earlier, on September 30, 2025, the same count was 1,486, so the fleet grew by 89 aircraft in twelve months.

United’s fleet, type by type

United publishes a fleet plan by aircraft family in its quarterly investor update. This is the table it filed on October 20, 2026, for the end of September.

The 737 is the backbone. United flies 304 737 MAXs and 329 older 737-700s, -800s and -900s, which together make up more than half of the mainline fleet.

Count by maker and Boeing dominates, with 938 mainline jets to Airbus’s 205. Every United widebody is a Boeing: 96 777s, 95 787s and 53 767s, or 244 in all.

That widebody count is a big part of what sets United apart. Delta flew 181 widebodies on the same date, its A330s, A350s and 767s, and none of them a 787.

The third quarter shows how fast the fleet is turning over. Between June 30 and September 30, United added 21 737 MAXs, seven 787s and five A321s, and the A319/A320 count fell by 12, for a net gain of 21 mainline jets.

Its newest type is the Airbus A321XLR, which entered domestic service in September 2026. United’s 2025 annual report lists the 767-300ER as its oldest type, at an average of 29.8 years, and puts the whole mainline fleet at an average of 15.3 years.

Why the numbers differ

Search this question and you will see 1,145, 1,139 and 1,080, while United’s own full count is 1,575. Most of them are right about something. They are counting different things, or counting on a different date.

Mainline or the whole operation

Every figure near 1,100 is the mainline fleet only. It leaves out the 432 United Express jets, which are more than a quarter of everything flying with a United flight number.

Many of those regional jets are not United’s. At the end of 2025, United owned 196 of its 424 regional aircraft, and the rest were owned or leased by the contractors that fly them: SkyWest, Mesa, Republic, GoJet and CommuteAir.

A different date

The mainline fleet grew by 77 jets in the first nine months of 2026, about two a week, so every count goes stale fast. Wikipedia gives 1,145 mainline aircraft as of October 2026, taken from Cirium’s fleet data, and the fleet tracker The Blue Board gives 1,139 as of September 28.

The 1,080 figure is from April 2026, when Aerospace Global News reported that United took its 1,080th mainline aircraft, a 737 MAX 9, in the week it marked 100 years since its first flight. Since then the mainline fleet has grown by more than 60 jets.

Parked jets and orders

United’s count leaves out aircraft it owns but does not fly. Its 2025 annual report listed 29 Embraer ERJ145XRs that were temporarily grounded and two CRJ700s waiting to be converted to CRJ550s, none of them in the total.

Orders are not fleet either. Add the 552 firm orders and the total would pass 2,100, but none of those jets has been delivered.

The order book, and where the fleet is going

On September 30, 2026, United had 552 aircraft on firm order: 142 787s, 42 737 MAX 9s, 167 737 MAX 10s, 108 A321neos, 48 A321XLRs and 45 A350s. Its filing says the deliveries run through 2034.

That is 209 more 737 MAXs, and the MAX 10s are running behind contract. United’s contracts call for three MAX 10s in the last three months of 2026 and 44 in 2027, while United itself expects none in 2026 and 19 in 2027.

The A350s are the odd ones out. United has 45 on firm order and none in service, and its filing gives no expected delivery year for any of them.

For the next few months the plan is clear. United expects to end 2026 with 1,166 mainline jets, including 99 787s and 320 737 MAXs, and 441 regional jets, a total of 1,607.

How United compares with Delta, American and Southwest

June 30, 2026 is the latest date for which all four of the biggest US airlines have reported their fleets, so it is the cleanest like-for-like comparison.

On that date United had 1,122 mainline jets, American 1,030, Delta 1,004 and Southwest 803. On total fleet the order changes: American 1,609, United 1,552, Delta 1,329, Southwest 803.

Our breakdowns of how many planes American Airlines has and how many planes Delta has show where those gaps sit, type by type.

By September 30, United’s mainline lead over Delta had grown to 138 jets, 1,143 against 1,005. Fleet size is only one way to rank them, and our Delta vs United vs American comparison covers the rest.