Originally Posted by
JoeDTW
I'm one of the few people who thinks AA's decision to retire the A330s made sense. It's expensive to train pilots and mechanics to operate each type of aircraft in an airline's fleet. AA had relatively few A330s, and retiring them meant AA employees no longer had to spend non-revenue producing time learning how to fly and maintain them.
AA has decided they do not want to fly transatlantic routes that make money only during the summer peak. Having fewer widebodies means AA will make less money on transatlantic routes in the summer, but they will also lose less money in the winter flying widebodies that don't generate enough traffic to fill them profitably.
Lots of rash decisions were made in the first months of the pandemic (not just by airlines...). I don't think AA would have made the decision to park the 330s if the 787 delays were known sooner. They would have been better to line up a buyer so they could at least get some money back rather than leave them sit idle in the dessert and on the balance sheet. The 757/767 fleet was already planned for retirement by end of Summer 2021, so those 2 variants were just accelerated.
Last edited by PHL; Nov 19, 2023 at 5:11 pm