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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