Alaska Airlines no longer has an order for 30 Airbus A320neo aircraft on the books.
At the start of the month, Airbus released its updated orders and deliveries numbers of
October with no A320neo orders recorded for Alaska Airlines.
Alaska Airlines previously had an order for 30 A320neos on its books. The airline had never
taken delivery of a single plane from this order as it wanted to move to a more streamlined fleet
centered around the Boeing 737 MAX fleet. However, it had maintained the order for quite some time
before finally now making its cancelation public through Airbus’ most recent orders report.
Furthermore, in a quarterly filing released on Thursday,
Alaska Airlines detailed its order book as consisting only of 74 firm Boeing 737 MAX 9s
and 12 firm Embraer E175s. The airline had previously listed the A320neo
as part of its order book, which is now absent in line with Airbus’ own reporting.
Although Alaska Airlines has been a long-time 737 operator, it inherited an order for 30
Airbus A320neo aircraft when it acquired Virgin America. While the two airlines had
complementary route networks, it became clear that the fleet would be a problem. Alaska
Airlines had an all-Boeing fleet while Virgin America had an all-Airbus fleet.
Until 2020 hit, Alaska Airlines was operating a mixed fleet. It did not have enough Boeing
aircraft on order to officially announce retirement dates for the Airbus A320 fleet,
and the grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX clouded some of that planning.
Boeing was a financial supporter of the Virgin America acquisition as well. In a report in the
Seattle Times, former CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Ray Conner, stated that Boeing had
provided Alaska a $400 million loan secured by Alaska’s existing 737 MAX commitments.
The relationship between Alaska and Boeing was quite strong.
The slogan “Proudly All Boeing” was also plastered at the nose of its Boeing mainline fleet.
Up until recently, the Airbus orders remained on the book,
but the carrier defined them as a quote-unquote “cancelable” order.
The first of these aircraft had been scheduled for delivery starting in 2024, however,
it became evident in December 2020 that Alaska would not be taking on any of these aircraft.
The airline first started its real transition back to an all-Boeing fleet in November of 2020 when
it announced a new transaction that would lead to the swap of 10 Airbus A320ceos from Alaska’s fleet
in favor of leases for 13 new Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft from Air Lease Corporation.
The next month, Alaska also announced an upsize of its Boeing 737 MAX order to total 68 new aircraft.
This included the 737 MAX leases announced in November 2020.
At that time, Alaska Airlines also announced it would accelerate its Airbus retirements,
so all of those aircraft would exit the fleet by 2023, all in favor of the 737 MAX.
Maintaining the Airbus A320neo order book had some competitive advantage for Alaska. If Boeing
was somehow unable to fulfill its fleet needs, it could look to Airbus to renegotiate a price that
would keep Alaska flying a mixed fleet without taking on the added cost pressures. Ultimately,
Alaska and Boeing reached agreements that worked, so it became clear the Airbus deal would not last.
The one Airbus type that will stay in Alaska’s fleet, for at least the next few years, are the
Airbus A321neos. Alaska has ten of these planes in its fleet with no clear way to get them out.
For now, Alaska will keep them flying. But, without the A320neo on the books,
Alaska is further stressing its preference for Boeing narrowbodies.
What do you think of Alaska Airlines’ decision
to cancel its order? Let us know by leaving a comment.