American Airlines removed 20 Boeing MD-80s from its fleet in a single day, as it works to retire the type that was once the mainstay of its fleet.
The Fort Worth-based carrier flew 20 aircraft to Roswell, New Mexico, on 23 August. They will be stored there until they are either sold or scrapped.
An American MD-80 arrives in Roswell
American Airlines
While one of the largest same-day retirement of aircraft from by an airline, the move keeps with American’s fleet plan that calls for it to remove 34 MD-80s during the third quarter. The airline had 87 aircraft at the end of June and targets 52 by the end of the year.
American executives have previously said that it will remove all of its MD-80s by 2018, however, a spokesman says today that it expects to fly “MD-80s at least through the summer of 2018”.
American was the first US “trunk” carrier – as the mainline carriers were once called – to order the MD-80 when it agreed to lease 20 from McDonnell Douglas in October 1982, the FlightGlobal archives show. The 142-seat aircraft would replace the airline’s Boeing 727-100 fleet.
Today, the Boeing 737-800 is replacing the MD-80 in American's fleet.
American took its first MD-80 (registration N218AA and MSN 49168) on 4 May 1983, the Flight Fleets Analyzer shows. It took two more of the aircraft that month.
The carrier placed what was then the single largest aircraft order ever when it committed to 167 MD-80s – 67 firm and 100 options – in March 1984. The deal made it clear that American would become one of the largest operators of the type.
Robert Crandall, then president of American, said at the time that the airline would use the aircraft to grow seat capacity by about a third by 1987.
American’s MD-80 fleet peaked at more than 360 aircraft in 2002, Fleets Analyzer shows.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
