American Airlines Confirms It’s Shopping For New Widebody Jets

Last week I told you that American Airlines was poised to buy new widebody aircraft. At Wednesday morning’s annual shareholders meeting, CEO Robert Isom acknowledged that the airline “has an RFP in the market” with both Airbus and Boeing as they work on their “next order for widebody aircraft.”

Isom noted that American currently has:

• 19 widebodies on order
  
• Options for 28 more
  
• An expectation of retiring Boeing 777s in 2030s

He downplays the urgency of the order, framing this as a need for long-term planning given the long timelines involved in acquiring aircraft, and noting that they already have done their narrowbody fleet planning.

Two years ago American placed an order for 260 narrowbody aircraft: 85 Airbus A321neos, 85 Boeing 737 MAX 10s, and 90 Embraer E175 regional jets. They also took options on 193 more planes. I had been first to report that this order was in the pipeline about 9 months earlier.

In fact, the need is much more urgent than framed at the stockholders meeting. American Airlines retired 40% of its long haul planes during the pandemic. They retrenched to becoming primarily a domestic airline, with long haul flying outside of South America mostly to partner hubs like London Heathrow, Tokyo, and Sydney – plus summer seasonal Europe. While Delta and United have international partnerships, American relies on those more to carry its customers around the globe.

And they’ve been cautious in adding large planes that can fly passengers around the globe to their fleet. The airline last ordered widebody aircarft 8 years ago – but they’ve even deferred some of the Boeing 787-9s they ordered at that time.

Brian Znotins, who runs network planning for American, has said he prefers domestic flying over international. He also prefers “adding a second frequency to some destinations, using two of these smaller planes instead of one larger one.”

[T]hat sixth trip from DFW to Indy is what we’re going to be earning a profit on instead of going to some speculative destination in Europe or Asia where you don’t have as many people wanting to go there and we’re not as successful on those routes.

The Airbus A321XLR was supposed to be American’s small ball strategy to fly long haul, but they’ve even cut back that order from 50 to 40 (the plane doesn’t have the originally-promised range).

A great deal has been changing at American Airlines. They no longer see Frontier Airlines (and Spirit) as their primary competitor. They’re trying to reposition themselves as a premium global airline. And for that they need planes.

A couple of months ago I wrote that “a long haul aircraft order is now expected, and the Airbus A330-900 seems plausible (for delivery slots) even though American eliminated Airbus widebodies for simplicity.”

I wrote last year that there was finally talk of a new widebody order. CEO Robert Isom has previously said that the 787-10 isn’t a good fit for American. But circumstances change, and the actual deal on the table can change these things, too.

Boeing and Airbus have huge order backlogs. Isom has said that doesn’t matter, American Airlines is an important enough customer that airframe manufacturers will find the planes to sell to them. But my A330 suggestion comes from potential for delivery slots. There would be a certain irony in this, since they gave up all their A330s. But some of those were due for retirement, there’s a different CEO now, and a realization that the previous strategy wasn’t working.

Notably, Isom’s confirmation about a planned widebody aircraft order is confirmation both of what everyone knows American Airlines needs to do – and of leaks in the past and as recently as last week by JonNYC and of my telling you in March that “a long haul aircraft order is now expected.”