In a very encouraging sign that the worst of the pandemic may be easing, American Airlines, the world's largest airlines, says it will have all its aircraft back in the air by May according to an internal email shared on Twitter from Maya Leibman, American Airlines’ Chief Information Officer.
In the memo, Ms Leibman says that "bookings are up between 150 to 400 per cent (depending upon route) compared to last year and within a few points of 2019. In fact, bookings last weekend were higher than they were in 2019! The last 7 days have been our biggest revenue days since the pandemic started."
She adds that the load factor is up to 80 per cent on domestic routes and the airline plans to be flying all its aircraft as of May.
“These are stats we haven’t seen in a year. And all I’m hearing from my friends and family are their travel plans for this summer — you probably are too. It feels like there’s this incredible pent-up demand to GO SOMEWHERE!," Ms. Leibman said.
"Sure, yields are not where we want them to be and we still have a long way to go but there’s no doubt that the train is leaving the station (plane is leaving the hangar — literally!)."
However, while that is great news, American had decided to retire 24 Airbus A330s, 34 757s, 16 767s, and 20 E190s.
Nonetheless, it has a total of 885 aircraft made up of 429 Airbus A320 family models, 344 737s, 67 Boeing 777s, and 45 787s.
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