American Airlines Poised To Buy Widebody Planes Again — After Retiring 40% Of Its Long Haul Fleet

American Airlines retired 40% of its long haul planes during the pandemic. They retrenched to becoming primarily a domestic airline, with long haul flying 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 customers around the globe.

And they’ve been allergic to 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.”

Aviation watchdog JonNYC now says a widebody aircraft order may be in the offing, focued on aircraft types “that are actually flying today” like the Airbus A330 and Boeing 787.

I really have to go back and find my old tweets on this, I totally forgot what I may have tweeted at that time.

Regardless, if I were betting, I'd say that there would be a definite focus on widebodies that are actually flying today, be that Boeing or Airbus.

— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) June 2, 2026

American Airlines ordered new narrowbody and regional jet aircraft two years ago. I gave readers a nine month heads up that this order was coming.

I wrote last year that there was finally talk of a new widebody order. But I don’t have certainty over what that looks like. 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.