One of the things to come out of American Airlines’ bankruptcy filing is that they intend to ask permission to get out of 24 aircraft leases.  That would be 20 very old MD-80 series aircraft and 4 Fokker 100 aircraft. 

All are currently parked in Roswell, NM. 

American has had those Fokker aircraft parked for a very long time and never found buyers or lessors for them.  The MD-80 aircraft are just plain worn out and too costly to fly. 

It’s not a stupid move on the part of AA with respect to its costs.  It will, however, no doubt anger lessors who were earning quite a nice revenue stream on parked aircraft.  It isn’t always wise to anger the leasing world when you have big plans for fleet renewal.  If it remains only these aircraft, the damage to reputation will be miminal at worst.

I think, however, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  I suspect we’ll see many, many more MD-80 series added to that list for no other reason than they have little or no value to AA when they can get shiney new, efficient airplanes from Boeing and Airbus.

Filed under: Airline Fleets, Airline News by ajax