American Airlines Trimming Some Older Planes From Its Fleet
May 16 2016 - 04:53PM
Dow Jones News
By Susan Carey
American Airlines Group Inc. (AAL), which is taking delivery of
a new airplane every seven days, told its pilots it plans to phase
out two small fleet types, the Embraer E190 and the Airbus
A330-300, and accelerate retirements of Boeing 767s.
The 20 Brazilian-made E190s, the smallest plane in American's
mainline fleet, came from merger partner US Airways. They are used
on American's shuttle flights linking Washington, New York and
Boston. While the shuttle will continue to be served by a mix of
mainline and regional aircraft, the A190s face some expensive
maintenance in the near future and American plans to phase them out
in 2019, the company said in a memo to its pilots.
The Airbus A330-300s planes also came from US Airways. American
only has nine of them, and their engine type is unique in its
fleet. The 291-seat planes will be retired in 2017 and 2018,
American said, to be replaced by similarly-sized Boeing 777-200ERs
already in the fleet. American said it intends to keep 15
A330-200s. Pilots who are qualified on the -300 variant can also
fly the -200.
As for its aged Boeing 767s, American said it has 40 currently
and had planned to be down to 25 by the end of 2017. But it now
intends to retire an additional eight in 2018, retaining the 17
youngest planes, which already have be retrofitted with fully
lie-flat seats in business class.
American, the nation's top airline by traffic, said pilots on
these three aircraft types will be given time to go through the
necessary training to move to another plane model. Flight
attendants also will be able to train in advance on new aircraft,
the memo said.
Write to Susan Carey at susan.carey@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 16, 2016 16:38 ET (20:38 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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