- American Airlines has announced that it will be accelerating retirement of its older Boeing 757s and 767s amid the Coronavirus outbreak.
- The airline has also made significant capacity reduction on its European routes in response to the 30-day travel suspension imposted by President Trump.
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As noted in an email to its employees (via OMAAT), American’s management has issued a number of changes to deal with the implications coming out of the Coronavirus outbreak and the temporary suspension of travel to the United States from Europe.
One major point covers the earlier retirement of its older 757 and 767 birds. According to the statement, their 767s will now be grounded during May 2020. This is just more than half a year before the previous time frame of late 2020 into early 2021. The more drastic change affects the 757s, which will be phased out between May 2020 and post-summer 2021.
“Doing so removes older, less fuel-efficient aircraft from our fleet soon than originally planned and avoids unnecessary maintenance and fuel costs.”
This is a huge change as the airline previously aimed to retire the 757s closer to 2025 in line with the delivery of their 50 new Airbus A321XLRs.
At the moment, they have 16 767-300ERs and 34 757-200s in service A
American has also announced capacity reduction on its European routes as follows:
- Reduce international capacity for the summer season by 34% versus the previous selling schedule, including a 50% reduction in April trans-Atlantic capacity.
- Continue to operate flights to and from Europe for up to seven days to ensure customers and employees can return home.
- Reduce service to South America, including a suspension of flights to Argentina.
- Suspended flights are expected to resume as early as May 7.
New schedule changes include:
Europe
- Continue operating flights from Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), New York City (JFK), and Miami (MIA) to Barcelona (BCN), Frankfurt (FRA), Madrid (MAD) and Paris (CDG) for up to seven days
- Suspending flights from Charlotte (CLT) and Philadelphia (PHL) to Amsterdam (AMS), Frankfurt (FRA), MAD, Munich (MUC) and Zurich (ZRH) on Friday, March 13, as CLT and PHL are not government-approved gateways
- Suspending service from Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina (RDU) to London (LHR)
- Reducing service from JFK, DFW and Chicago (ORD) to LHR
- Delaying the start of some seasonal routes to early May
South America
- Suspending service from MIA, JFK, DFW, LAX to Buenos Aires (EZE) and ending service from MIA to Cordoba, Argentina (COR)
- Suspending service from DFW and LAX to São Paulo (GRU)
- Suspending service from DFW to Santiago (SCL)
[Featured Photo: Bradley Wint/Gate Checked]
