bradleyl12

With the LUS A319's aging, which aircraft will they replace it with? The obvious choices are the A319 NEO, A220-300, or 737 MAX 7. Personally, my gut is leaning towards the MAX 7's. I would expect the decision to happen sooner rather than later. Any thoughts?

USFlyerUS

32Qs or 7M8s - AA has stated that it no longer wants the smaller planes of each type. Plus, with the pilot shortage over the next decade, I anticipate we'll see larger aircraft on many routes.

bchandler02

So if they go to the larger variants, what happens to airports like EYW that the 319 can handle but others cant, or thin routes that don't support a larger volume (South America?)? Do they all take the opposite approach and drop down to E175s only?

Antarius

AA has plenty of the LAA a319s that are quite young. They can rotate those on to the specific routes that need them, similar to how they scheduled the 752s.

enviroian

Resurrect the 'dogs!

Herb687

I wouldn't!

jljones78

Gary Leff had an article last year that quoted Isom and Znotins talking about reworking those interiors to add more J seats (8J is a huge problem with those planes IMO), so I don't think they're going anywhere. They were sort of indicating that they wanted to tee it up after they were finished with the 321 oasis mods.

Antarius

They have a large fleet of less than 8 year old a319s and have leased some more from GECAS and have bought some second hand ones too. They're not going anywhere.

AA can easily add more J and rotate the fleet to the necessary destinations as they add larger planes such as the M8 and 321neo for other routes.

Barring some sort of technological leap that forces their hand, I suspect there will be a319s around for another decade and a half at the minimum.

aztimm

The US A319 had 12 F seats prior to the merger, but the cabin was reconfigured to match the AA version. There were also 2 exit row seats (an A and F, I think row 12?) that didn't have a seat in front, so they had loads of legroom (my go-to for booking, and was the next best thing to F on the aircraft).

Is the 8 F seats really a problem that AA will address though? I regularly see it as one for flyers here on FT and on the Facebook groups to gripe about, but I don't recall AA mentioning this problem.

As for replacements, I recall that DL had nearly rebuilt some rather old aircraft that they owned from both DL and NW (I think the B767 and possibly others). If AA really wanted to keep the aircraft, I'm sure they could.

diburning

Yeah, DL did a full cabin refresh on their A319s and A320s with some rather unique features. They put the pivoting space bins on them, and the air vents are on what we DL flyer affectionately call UFO pods, which have a fan in them, so that when the APU is off and there's no ground air hooked up, that you can still get some air out of the vents.

Remember that aircraft aren't really rated by age, but by number of pressurization cycles. A LUS A319 that was flying BOS-DCA five roundtrips a day would have more cycles than one that flew PHL-ORD twice a day. Even then, the small difference is negligible if they rotated aircraft appropriately. An A319 has a lifespan of 40,000 cycles.

D3Kingg

The A319 first class cabin should be reduced to only four seats in a 1-1 configuration with lie flat mode.

Antarius

Even better, one queen size bed.

Everyone else can use the rear.

jayer

Doug was enamored with the A319. Picking them up second-hand while the world was moving on to A220s. Just don't see them going away soon. If anything they retired too many planes and are short total airframes (and people to fly them).

Of course if the leisure travel bubble pops. . . .

Antarius

The world isn't taking A220s like they're the obvious choice. There are a paltry 220 built globally, which is less than twice the number of a319s that AA has.

There's zero value in taking on a new fleet subtype when you have a 100+ strong young a319 fleet already.

The a220 is a great aircraft and will someday do really well. If it was the clear obvious best thing ever, then Bombardier wouldn't have given it up for basically free. Until then, the A320 series still continues to be the prodigal son in the Airbus family.

EXP100

The more interesting question is how much longer will the A320s be around. I think most were delivered in the late 1990s/early 2000s in part to cover the shuttle route which was a sub fleet of dedicated single class plane. I remember everyone got a full drink and snack (beyond pretzels) service. Today there's no service in Y.