In light of the Coronavirus outbreak, dropped demand, and travel restrictions to and from many countries, American Airlines has decided to retire its fleet of 16 remaining Boeing 767-300ER in May 2020, one year earlier than originally planned.
Additionally, its fleet of 34 Boeing 757-200 are also being retired a whole year earlier than initially planned but are not due to leave the fleet completely until September 2021.
American Airlines is suspending all transatlantic routes from Charlotte, Philadelphia and Raleigh/Durham, as well as selected other services to and from Europe. This is a direct result of President Donald Trump’s decision to ban Schengen citizens from entering the United States for 30 days. Furthermore, all flights to Argentina as well as the Dallas-Santiago, Dallas-Sao Paulo and Los Angeles to Sao Paulo routes have been cancelled by the airline.
The configuration for American Airlines’ Boeing 767-300 features a total of 209 seats, 28 of which are lie-flat business class seats. They are mostly being used on flights to Europe and on routes from Miami to Central and South America. The Boeing 757-200 feature 176 seats in an international configuration or 188 seats in a domestic configuration with 16 and 12 business class seats.
As a replacement for these aircraft, once demand returns to a normal level, the airline has 22 Boeing 787-8 as well as 104 Airbus A321neo and A321XLR on order.
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Jan-Hendrik is an aviation enthusiast from Germany, loves to travel the world and fly on as many aircraft as possible. His first flight was with a Condor 757 to Spain and has been interested in aviation ever since. His fields of expertise are aircraft accidents and passenger experience (PaxEx).
