Even as flying starts to become a thing again, if slowly, airlines are still making decisions about how many of their planes to return to service, and how many to retire early, waiting for new demand and new planes to rebuild their fleets.
We’ve reported earlier on some specific airline decisions, including the world-wide trend toward the final wind-down of the four-engine era, with rapid retirements of A340s, A380s and 747s from passenger service, and airline decisions to drop older twin-engine planes in favor of newer.
Analysts at Cowen, a consultant to bankers and aircraft lessors among others estimates that U.S. airlines alone, with some of the world’s largest fleets, may end up with up to a thousand fewer planes. Over 3,000 have been stored, and the cost of maintaining a jetliner in ready-to-fly condition is not cheap; they must be constantly inspected, engines powered up, and other systems maintained.
If a return to ‘normal’ is as slow as projected, it will make more sense to take many older planes, even of current models, off life support and wait for planes long since ordered for delivery over the next few years. One joker in the deck: Even older 737s may have to hang around a while longer waiting for approval to fly the new 737 Max again.
Cowen’s June 3rd report did hold out a fair future for U.S. airlines; it points out that they are largely well-capitalized and have good access to credit; because of consolidation over the past couple of decades, there are few really weak players in the mix. European airlines, on the other hand, have not seen that type of consolidation, and even major players such as Lufthansa and AF/KLM have skated perilously close to collapse, while some others have shut down. In the shuffle, Alitalia became, again, what is now a real rarity in Europe: a state-owned airline.
