Confirmed: American Airlines Buying More Planes

Last month American placed an order for 47 Boeing 787s.

A couple of months ago they revealed to employees they were looking to buy used Airbus A319s.

And now the world’s largest airline has made a deal to buy 15 Bombardier CRJ-900s with options for 15 more. These would add to American’s already substantial fleet of CR9s.

  • Currently PSA operates 53 of these planes delivered between 2014 and 2016, configured with 76 seats including 12 first class seats.

  • Mesa operates 64 of them, all but 7 delivered between 2003 and 2011. Some have 76 seats and some – with just 9 first class seats – have 79. Many of these were purchased used, and a handful may still even have US Airways paint jobs.

Despite a move towards fleet commonality, American also operates 76 seat Embraer ERJ-175s as well. They’ll clearly continue to operate both types, though presumably the new planes will replacement retirements either of 76-79 seat aircraft (one for one swap) or of smaller regional jets (growth by upgauging rather than increasing plane count).


American Airlines EMB-175

The list price for these planes is $719 million so a good rough guess is that American would be paying half that.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Comments

  1. I didnt know they could put 8 across seating in a CR9. If they configure them “properly” they could fit like 160 on one of these.

Comments are closed.