Welcome to the third episode covering recent fleet news,
and the last episode posted on our main Simple Flying channel.
After this, we’ll be moving this series to our second channel: Long Haul by Simple Flying.
If you want to check out other videos in this series,
as well as our summaries on recent incidents, you’ll find them in our playlist called
“Simple Flying Summarizes,” which we’ll link to in the description.
With all of that out of the way, let’s see what’s happened recently with airline fleets…
In the world of aircraft orders we saw
low-cost leisure operator Jet2 place its first-ever Airbus order for 36 A321neos.
The order had extra significance as the airline has mainly been an all-Boeing carrier.
On the other side of the world, Aeromexico will enter a new lease agreement for 12
Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft. This was cleared by the United States Bankruptcy Court and its final
order authorizing the deal. The jets will come from aircraft lessor Dubai Aerospace Enterprise.
Around the same time, 5 Boeing 737 MAX 8s have been ordered by aircraft lessor Griffin Global
Asset Management. Unfortunately, it’s not yet known which airlines these jets will fly with.
Not all negotiations move forward with orders, however.
Days later we saw Ryanair declare that it will no longer negotiate for the 737 MAX 10,
claiming that Boeing has a more optimistic outlook on aircraft pricing than they do.
As you may have also seen in a previous video, US carrier Eastern Airlines is getting into
the cargo business with an order for 35 Boeing 777 converted freighters.
On September 8th we saw Spirit Airlines sign leasing agreements to finance 15 of its upcoming
Airbus A320neo family aircraft deliveries with Air Lease Corporation. The deal is split between
ten new A321neos and five A320neos. The A320neos will be delivered in 2021 and 2022
while the A321neos will arrive from 2023 and through 2024.
We then found out that US startup Breeze had placed orders for 20 additional A220s
on top of the 60 firm orders already existing.
We also discovered that a Boeing 747-8i,
originally ordered by Lufthansa, was picked up by the government of Egypt
as a new VIP transport. This news marks an end to the mystery of the undisclosed customer.
Later in the month, we discovered that startup Northern Pacific Airways secured
its first six 757s ahead of launching operations.
The first jet is undergoing maintenance and is expected to arrive in Alaska by December.
Meanwhile, struggling carrier AirAsia struck a deal with Airbus for the planemaker to cut
prices or reschedule the delivery of aircraft. Much-welcomed news for AirAsia, the deal involves
hundreds of Airbus A320neo-family aircraft and is worth tens of billions of dollars.
Finally for orders, we saw Brazil’s GOL commit to purchase or lease
up to 250 VA-X4 electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft
from Vertical Aerospace. GOL hopes of eventually launch an urban ridesharing business.
When it comes to aircraft deliveries, we, unfortunately, saw a few carriers
delay the acceptance of new jets. Scandinavian carrier SAS says its final two
A350s on order are now slotted to arrive sometime during the fiscal year of 2024.
Meanwhile, a number of airlines,
including Vistara, will have their 787 deliveries further delayed due to ongoing
problems at Boeing. The planemaker is working to solve its production issues with the FAA.
Moving up its delivery, Emirates will get the final Airbus A380 almost a year early.
The last new superjumbo to ever be delivered by Airbus will join Emirates in November 2021.
With the last MD-11s retired, Lufthansa is adding two more 777 freighters to the fleet.
One will come directly from Boeing with the other from Emirates via lessor Dubai Aerospace.
Oman’s SalamAir received the first of two Airbus A321neo aircraft on September
10th while neighboring Saudi carrier FlyADeal received another A320neo.
Meanwhile, Ethiopian Airlines received its 32nd Dash 8-400 from De Havilland Canada.
While not quite handed-over, two aircraft operators unveiled their yet-to-be-delivered
aircraft. Iraqi Airways showed off its first of five A220s while the German Air Force
unveiled the first of two A321LRs destined for troop transport and medical evacuation.
A few aircraft were moved in or out of storage over the past few weeks too. One British Airways
A380 left storage at Spain’s Teruel and was relocated to London Heathrow. Meanwhile, Lufthansa
flew its last A380 out of Frankfurt to the same Spanish storage facility, potentially marking an
end to the German carrier’s A380 operations. Lufthansa also moved one of its 747-400s out
of storage in the Netherlands and hopes to resume operation of this type in a few weeks.
For Etihad, its last A350-1000 stored in France was flown to its new home in Abu
Dhabi. The airline intends to begin A350 operations sometime next year.
In fleet restructuring news we will see Philippine Airlines remove 22 aircraft from the fleet
and have further narrowbody deliveries delayed.
A similar move is also happening at nearby Garuda Indonesia, which hopes to shrink its
fleet and cancel or renegotiate existing orders in order to stay financially afloat.
In the last bits of news, around 12 Air India A320s remain grounded and are in need of engine
replacements. However, the carrier doesn’t have the funds required to get the jets flying again.
Over in South America, it was confirmed that LATAM will send 4 Dreamliners
to its Brazilian subsidiary from Chile.
Well, as usual, we weren’t able to cover everything in this video,
or go into as much detail as we would have liked. But as with
all of our videos, there’s a more detailed corresponding article on SimpleFlying.com.
Check out the links in the description to learn more- and, as always,
share your thoughts on this video and any of the fleet changes we covered, by leaving a comment!