Originally Posted by
WingNaPrayer
At one time they were, but if memory serves, AMR hocked the farm and funds borrowed against those once-owned jets are a major portion of AA's huge debt load they are carrying, which is still close to 15Bil - and I give them some accolades for paying that down from the 20Bil it was sitting at less than 30 months ago.
Not quite - of AA's 325 MD-80s at 12/31/06, only 138 were owned and the other 187 were leased; 72 of them subject to capital leases and 115 on operating leases.
And although AA pledged the bulk of its fleet for its 2001-03 borrowings during its period of negative cash flow, the MD-80s comprise a miniscule portion of the value of the collateral; most of the value is in AA's 777s, 763s, 737s and 757s. Additionally, AA paid down almost $1 billion in debt in the fourth quarter alone, releasing a lot of airplanes from the collateral listings.
AA's long-term debt (relating to airplanes) as of 9/30/07 was $9.8 billion plus $700 million of capital lease obligations. The remainder of AMR's debts consist of Pension and postretirement benefits, Other liabilities, deferred gains and deferred credits (none of them related to airplanes). It will be interesting to see just how much debt AA has paid down when the 10-K is released next month or early March.