When the pandemic began, American Airlines quickly retired its fleet of Airbus A330 as well as Boeing 757 and 767 jets. In hindsight, that does not appear to have been a wise decision. Facing an aircraft shortage due to extended 787 production delays, American Airlines has just cancelled four longhaul routes and delayed a fifth.
American Airlines Suspends International Routes After 787 Delays
As airline gear up for a busy summer travel season to Europe, American Airlines faces a challenge that is only becoming more difficult: an aircraft shortage.
While United Airlines is ramping up its schedule to Europe to unprecedented levels, American Airlines conservatively loaded only 80% of its 2019 transatlantic schedule for the summer of 2022, blaming its aircraft shortage. Now it will cut four additional routes, including:
- Seattle (SEA) and London (LHR)
- Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) and Santiago, Chile (SCL)
- Los Angeles (LAX) and Sydney (SYD)
- Miami (MIA) – Sao Paulo (GRU) – reduced to one flight per day, from two
Furthermore, the launch of American’s new Dallas to Tel Aviv (TLV) service will be delayed.
American calls these delays “temporary” in nature and will load the schedule changes over the weekend. Passengers holding seats on cancelled flights will be automatically rebooked.
In 2021, American Airlines expected to have 13 new 787 jets for its 2022 summer schedule, but by the end of the year it preemptively reduced its summer schedule, predicting only four of the 13 Dreamliners would arrive in time. At that time, it cut 2022 service to:
- Dubrovnik (DBV)
- Edinburgh (EDI)
- Hong Kong (HKG)
- Prague (PRG)
- Shannon (SNN)
But with ongoing regulatory issues complicating the 787 program, American Airlines only received one Dreamliner in 2021 and may not receive any more this year.
Why Did American Airlines Retire Airbus A330?
Predicting a sustained drop in demand coupled with plans to modernize its fleet with more 787 jets, American retired its A330, 757, and 767 jets early in the pandemic.
American Airlines inherited its fleet of Airbus A330 aircraft from US Airways, which utilized them for transatlantic and Caribbean operations. These were modern aircraft with reverse herringbone seats in business class and many years of life left.
As easy as it to second-guess AA now, the rush to retire aircraft was not an industry-wide trend. United Airlines, under the direction of former American Airlines President Scott Kirby, took a very different approach to American (and Delta) during the pandemic and did not retire any aircraft type.
Kirby now boasts of this in press interviews and employee memos, as United plans an ambitious transatlantic expansion this summer.
Meanwhile, Boeing has confirmed that it will compensate American Airlines for the delivery day according to The Wall Street Journal.
CONCLUSION
The decision to retire the A330 is hurting American Airlines as it continues to reduce its summer intercontinental schedule in light of Boeing 787 Dreamliner delays.
Perhaps one macro lesson airlines will learn from the pandemic is that rushing to retire aircraft types may seem logical but ends up costing more in the long run. Production delays for new aircraft are hardly a new phenomenon.
image: U-95
American had overhauled the A330 interiors to add premium economy as well. My wife and I flew PHL to DUB in business class a few years ago. I found the envoy reverse herringbone business class to be a great product. Definitely better than risking getting a “coffin class” zodiac seat on some of the 787s or 777s.
Those A330’s were perfectly fine aircraft and fairly efficient and reliable. I found them very comfortable when on them from the Charlotte hub to Europe. It’s completely perplexing why they chose to retire them other than to streamline aircraft types, which airlines like Delta have shown is an overrated practice. Yet another wildly poor choice by AA under Parker that should have investors really questioning leadership there (even though he’s somewhat stepping down). They could have very easily stored them for a bit in the desert during the height of the pandemic as a wait and see.
Even the 767’s, while old as heck, still had some life and could have been used for popular Hawaii/Mexico/Florida flights instead of narrow body models like the A321 or 737’s with less capacity. The 757’s were the only model that did seem redundant and less useful given the A321 so prevalent in the fleet now (and so much more fuel efficient).
Prior to Covid, AA had three flights a day to GRU from MIA including the popular day flight. As well codeshares with LATAM. Between the two and the partnership they once had they pretty much controlled traffic between Florida and Brazil (and most of the U.S.). Even with the new GOL partnership AA is a shell of its former self in Brazil, especially out of Florida.
The 767s were already slated to be retired by the end of 2021 Pre-Covid, and the PaxEx on those 767s were absolutely shit. The 757s had the same PaxEx problem, but AA needed those 757s for long and thin routes out of Philly, Dallas, and Miami (the short haul ones weren’t needed though). I agree about the a330s, some of those planes were only 6 years old and AA spent lots of money retrofitting a330-200s with Prem. Economy.
To summarize, it made sense to retire the 767s, but not the 757s or a330s
Can’t agree more about the A330s. The AA 767s were the worst Big 3 widebody by the a country mile, so from a product perspective it’s good that AA retired them, but it’s also not like they’ve cared about upgrading the product so not even sure why they retired them.
I agree that the 767 was not up to par for European flights at this point. My point was more that they would have been very useful though for Hawaii, Mexico, and Florida. United is using them for this and Delta just announced three new routes from JFK, DTW, and ATL to Hawaii using the 767. For high traffic leisure destinations they are a perfect fit and much better than the A321’s being used primarily now to Hawaii by AA.
Even though the A330-200 model was relatively new in the fleet I can see why AA had to make a decision to either retain and continue to operate a small fleet of the type or park them. Parking and storing the small fleet is rather expensive in not only storage/upkeep fees but retaining a trained pool of Pilots is counterproductive and not a good financial decision. The pandemic and ensuing drop in traffic allowed airlines to jettison older/unwanted aircraft but what surprises Me is that AA couldn’t find another airline to swap aircraft types (A330’s for 777s or 787s) because they just endided up parking them and are still paying on them.
So the question being if the A330’s are still parked and being payed for, and have not been scrapped, why not in light of these delays on the 787’s spend a few months getting them back in the air again with maintenance and crew retraining. These delays could end up being two years – so it seems a good bridge solution. If they have not been gutted you have 24 perfectly fine aircraft just sitting there.
Do they have the crews to fly them? Another thing that happened was AA put a lot of pilots on furlough and offered early retirement to older crew. So if they dumped Airbus crew then those folks likely found other employment. Most likely they retained the Boeing crews with the intention of getting them 787 ratings. I doubt we are getting the full sordid tale.
Where are they now?
Would assume Pima in AZ or Victorville in CA. I visited Pima last year but didn’t see the AA A330’s so I imagine in Victorville.
Roswell, NM
They -200’s are in Roswell and I couldn’t tell you about the -300 series. As an AA pilot it is very disheartening to continue to give up market share while management seems content with compensation from Boeing.
Seriously, what’s stopping them from putting them back in active service until the situation is under control? Wasn’t that the whole point of storing the planes in the desert in first place?
AA 767s are among the most comfortable planes. We’ve flown them many times in various classes. Always smooth and pleasant. AA seems to stumble frequently of late with poor padding choices in its seats and less innovation than UAL.
That AA lacks strategic vision is the least of their problem. I’ll settle for consistent customer service and a drink or two if stuck in economy. Baby steps.
Well, as counter-intuitive as it seems, it would have made MORE financial sense to keep the 757/767 fleet. As another posted pointed out: the 757 was an excellent choice for long, thin routes. What he failed to mention is that the 757/767 are a common crew. In other words, pilots can fly a 757 from Philly to Dublin, then pick up a 767 the next day for the return. It’s that commonality which made those planes great. Granted, AA seemed to neglect their 767 airframes, but that doesn’t seem relevant to the economics of the fleet.
I agree on the 767, it served a purpose in the fleet still. But the problem with the 757 is the large amount of A321’s that have been delivered to AA. And many more to come. It serves a similar function and is far more fuel efficient.
Also, I’m not entirely sure that crews would fly in the manner you cited. Swapping out aircraft on the fly. I believe there are two distinct pay tiers between narrow and wide body aircraft, but I could be wrong.
Presently in Maui. Ran into a United Crew who arrived the same time we did. They flew inbound from JFK to OGG…. On a B767? Didn’t know that that aircraft could lift a full load and fly that far…..
That must have been EWR-OGG. No current n/s to OGG from JFK operated by anyone.
KJFK-PHOG is 4279 nm, any of the ER models will do that easily, the lowest range of the three is the -400ER which will do 5625 nm. The -200ER will o 6590 nm.
LOL, those HKG flights and SEA-LHR are licenses to lose money right now (CX can barely sustain any operations at all, and those LHR flights out of SEA are ghost towns, you can pretty much have your own row in coach). Some of this is AA trimming flights they wish they could fly right now, some of this is burying mistakes or shutting down routes that they wouldn’t fly anyway.
Can this company be any more mismanaged?…..I mean really, can it?
When do they start the multimillion dollar program to reinstall all the seatback entertainment that they ripped out?
I’m already adjusting my summer travel to maximize Delta when able as I see this being a summer of misery for AA and their passengers. Add in some good T storms in Dallas and we’ve got Yahtzee!
My family and I have flown the A330 to different European cities first with US Air and then AA. They were fantastic aircraft. We were once upgraded to Business class and it was great. Now I notice nothing but Dreamliners which I have not yet flown and frankly in no rush given what I have heard about operations in Boeing’s SC integration facility. Not the same Boeing that produced the 747 & 777.