After weeks of stories about planes being sent to storage and fleet reductions—and those are not over for all—two U.S. airlines are seeing enough revival to start bringing some planes back from storage.
American and Delta, which have each stored hundreds of plains, are bringing 300 of them back into service over the next two months. Passenger volume is still less than way below what it had been, but increases in passengers combined with space needed for social distancing in-flight means more planes are needed.
For June, American has restored a mixed list of 12 A320s, 34 737-800s, 10 777s and 8 787s. They are being used for cargo flights as well as passenger service. For July, another 141 planes, mostly 737s will be back. By then, American will be flying about 55% of its flights, with planes about 62% full; before the crisis, flights were often in the 90% range.
Delta had already pulled 30 planes back into service and added 16 for June; in July another 72 will return. Delta’s returnees are also heavy on the 737s, with a number of A321s as well.
The moves will leave American with over 150 mainline jets still in storage, while Delta will have over 600. In all, U.S. airlines stored about 3000 planes.
