American Airlines (AA, Dallas/Fort Worth) is planning to add second-hand A319-100s to increase its small narrowbody fleet rather than ordering new aircraft in the near future, Vice-President (Planning) Vasu Raja told employees in an internal newsletter.
"We are the largest operator of the A319 in the world. As there are more and more of this kind of planes [i.e. small narrowbodies] that come online it effectively lowers the market value of the A319s at a time when so many A319s are aging out of their initial lease terms... That creates a unique opportunity for us where our decision isn’t necessarily to go buy a brand new small narrowbody, we can still be players in the used narrowbody space," Raja said in the letter, as quoted by an aviation blog View from the Wing.
According to the ch-aviation fleets advanced module, American Airlines currently operates 133 A319-100s. The aircraft are 15.5 years old on average, although their individual age ranges from 4.3 to 21 years. American Airlines' A319s are equipped with 128 passenger seats. As such, the Airbus jets are in the same market segment as A220s, which the carrier has, for now, shunned.
"We are looking at being able to fly all of our aircraft a lot longer, because that’s a really wise capital thing to do, but we’re also being very opportunistic about how we think about that small narrowbody fleet in the future," Raja added.