American Airlines Abandoned Their Airbus A330s – Now Qatar Airways May Give Them New Life

by Gary Leff on November 19, 2024

During the pandemic American Airlines retired a lot of planes. They simplified their fleet, so that they’d only operate Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 narrowbody families, and Boeing 787 and 777 widebodies.

That meant sending Boeing 757s, 767s, Airbus A330-200s and Airbus A330-300s to the desert along with their Embraer E-195s. Some of the 757s went to Northern Pacific, 767s to Amazon, and Airbus A330s remained parked.

It was a shame because without that capacity, American couldn’t take advantage of the boom in travel to Europe once borders re-opened. They lacked the cheap lift that would let them experiment on new routes, where a Boeing 787 or 777 is too costly. And, of course, deliveries of new Boeing 787s that American had ordered were delayed (both by Boeing, and by American which has deferred some of their 787-9 orders).

The thing about those Airbus A330s is that American Airlines was even still paying for some of them but not using the planes – at least with leased Airbus A330-300s, while American owned the A330-200s.

Now, aviation watchdog JonNYC says that American Airlines partner (and one-time enemy) Qatar Airways is looking at the fleet of stored Airbus A330-200s for their own operatoins.

I’m hearing that Qatar is taking a peek at the AA 330-200s stored in the desert. I assume the AA lease term is coming to an end

— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) November 19, 2024

Even though the Airbus A330-200s were parked four and a half years ago, that fleet is still only about 13 years old on average. It was larger in quantity and newer than the 9 orphan -300s which were certainly on the way out, even without the pandemic.

These planes were ex-US Airways, from shortly before taking over American, and had just been retrofit to offer premium economy before being parked. They have 20 business class, 21 premium economy, and 206 coach seats. With old US Airways Envoy business class seats, Qatar would certainly retrofit these interiors before placing the aircraft into service.

Qatar Airways has complained about widebody aircraft order delays, placed an order for 20 more Boeing 777-9 aircraft (which isn’t yet in commercial service), and could make another sizeable widebody order. Used Airbus A330s could be a stopgap, adding to a small existing fleet of the plane type.

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