American Airlines' Boeing 777-200ER Fleet_ Old, But Not Going Anywhere

Over on our long-haul channel, the YouTube channel we use for longer explainer videos, we recently went over the fleet of American Airlines. One part of this video discussed the carrier's 777-200ER fleet and that it was coming due for replacement. While American will need to replace these jets eventually, some insider info has revealed that the airline has decided to extend the life of these jets by investing in newer cabins. Let's take a look at what's going on for today's video. And yet again, the information comes from aviation watchdog-slash-insider John NYC. The individual reports that instead of retiring the aircraft, American will invest in new cabins and faster Wi-Fi for its fleet of 777-200ERs. As noted by Matthew Clint of Live and Let's Fly, the move reflects lessons learned from the pandemic when American retired numerous subfleets too quickly and later found themselves short on capacity when demand surged back. In case you need a reminder, the One World Alliance member got rid of its 757, 767 and A330 fleets in March 2020 as a way to simplify operations amid low demand and future uncertainty. And so John NYC is claiming that American will keep its fleet of 47 Boeing 777-200ERs, equipping them with new Viasat Wi-Fi systems. After the Wi-Fi work, American will fully refresh the cabins. This refresh will include the addition of American's relatively new flagship suite product. An international business-class product, these suites already feature on some of the airline's Boeing 787-9s and will be a core part of the Airbus A321XLR subfleet. According to One Mile at a Time, American's 777-200ERs each feature 37 business-class seats. Of those jets, 28 have the Collins Aerospace Super Diamond seats, while 19 have the Safran Concept D seats, making the split about 60% and 40%. But thankfully, the retrofit will not be limited to business-class, as premium economy and economy cabins will be updated as well. Again, we imagine these products will be the same as those being installed on the newer 787-9s and A321XLRs. According to Planespotters.net, the 777-200ER fleet, at the time of making this video in late September, average just under 25 years old. They were delivered between 1999 and 2007. We were expecting American to be at least thinking about how it might replace these older aircraft. After all, most airlines retire their jets when they get to be around 30 years old. In that long-haul video we mentioned at the beginning, our money was on the 787-10. That could still be the case, but at least for now, American's plan is to hold onto its 777-200ERs for a while longer. What do you think of this move? Let us know by leaving a comment.