While many of us buy “new” cars that are used or “pre-owned”. American Airlines plans to buy some “new” used A319 planes for its fleet.
American Airlines has 20 Embraer ERJ-190s in its fleet, that will soon be retired. They don’t have a replacement in the 100 seat range. American’s Vice President of Planning recently shared that they don’t have an interest in buying the new A220.
Instead, American plans to pick up more Airbus A319s on the used market super cheap. A cost-driven down, in part, by the growing popularity of the A220 plane. Delta is just one competitor airline that has invested heavily in the A220.
One of the advantages of these planes for American Airlines is that they are already the largest operator of the A319 in the world. As more Airbus A220s join airline fleets, this lowers the market value of the 319s (which launched around 2005 to 2012), which makes these planes ripe for the picking and easy for American to maintain.
American say they are “looking at being able to fly all of our aircraft a lot longer because that’s a really wise capital thing to do, but we’re also being very opportunistic about how we think about that small narrowbody fleet in the future.”
Good Or Bad?
Is this a good or a bad thing for passengers? Well, I love the A319. It is a popular plane in the British Airways European fleet and you can read our latest review of my March 2019 flight on the British Airways A319 to find out what flying in one is like.
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