American Airlines is planning to ditch the new additions to the fleet from Airbus A330-200s to the list of aircraft types. This plan comes after the event of the pandemic. The airline has already retired 150 airplanes in their fleet including Boeing 757s and 767s, Embraer E190s, Airbus A330-300s, Bombardier CRJ200s. Out total of 1350 airplanes 200 are grounded due to pandemic.

Upon these planes, American airlines secured the rights to defer the deliveries of eighteen Boeing 737 Maxes which are scheduled for delivery in 2021 and 2022 to 2023 and 2024. The airline also finalized sale-leaseback transactions to finance its remaining Airbus A321 deliveries in 2021. This allowed to the airline to secure all the planned deliveries through next year.

American Airlines CEO Doug Parker repeated calls for another round of financial support from the federal government as the airline is dropping of 19,000 jobs on October 1 with the expiration of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act’s Payroll Support Program. Another 20,000 employees have opted for “early out” or long-term leave.

“I happen to believe that what we’re seeing now, even in this environment, is a gradual return of revenues,” said Parker. “We expect that to continue. I think six months from now certainly you’ll see a better environment than we have today irrespective of what may or may not have happened as it relates to the pandemic itself because people are becoming more and more comfortable with travel and cities are opening up…And from an airline cyclicality perspective we’ll be headed into our summer, which is always higher demand. So our view is that six months of PSP extension would be the last PSP extension you would need to keep that [employment] infrastructure in place.”