Thursday, February 23, 2012

More A320s hit the market after Air Australia ceases operations


The collapse of Air Australia last week has left six CFM56-5A3-powered Airbus A320s available for purchase or lease in the market.
Air Australia operated six A320s that that were manufactured between 1991 and 1993. The carrier was also due to receive a new A320 from AerCap in April.
According to Flightglobal's Ascend online database, there are 2,767 A320s currently in service with an estimated 130 aircraft now in storage.
The CFM56-5A powered population accounts for 325 aircraft and 44 of them, or 18%, in storage.
Of the 99 V2500-A1 engine powered fleet, an estimated 24 aircraft are in storage, or 24% of the population.
Another 23 stored A320s have CFM56-5B engines out of a 1,268 aircraft population. There are also 39 V2527-A5-powered aircraft in storage out of a total fleet 1,075 units.
Air Australia is the sixth A320 operator to stop operations since March 2011.

About a year ago, Kuwaiti carrier Wataniya Airways ceased operations after running into financial trouble. It operated a fleet of seven aircraft, manufactured between 2008 and 2010, equipped with CFM56-5B4/3 engines. ALAFCO leased Wataniya three A320s (3739, 3791, 4049), which were later placed with VietJet Air last November. Aercap had three aircraft (4235, 4304, 4411) that were leased to InterJet last summer. ILFC's single A320 (3907) was placed on lease to RAK Airways last August.
Russian low-cost AviaNova ceased operations last October. Its four A320 fleet with V2527-A5 engines have not been placed. Two 1996/97-vintage aircraft (543, 661) are owned by ILFC. The remaining two (MSNs 1918, 1969) were built in 2002 and 2003 and are owned by Aviation Capital Group.
In November, Dutch charter carrier Amsterdam Airlines ceased operations. It operated two V2500-powered A320s leased from ILFC. Both aircraft, manufactured in 1993 and 1995, are still available.
UK charter airline Astraeus had a fleet of Boeing 737s and 757s as well as one A320 aircraft when it ceased operations. The 1991-vintage A320 (MSN 136) aircraft with CFM56-5A1 engines has been parted out.
Flightglobal Finance Pro understands that seven A320s, which belonged to the now defunct airline Spanair, are about to be placed with new operators in Europe.

Spanair stopped operations in late January. The Spanish carrier operated a 29-aircraft fleet with 13 A320s from ILFC, two 2001-vintage A320s from Itochu AeroTech Corp as well as two A320s subleased from SAS. RBS Aviation Capital (through the Airspeed-2007 securitization) had one 2004-vintage aircraft while FLY Leasing had 2003-vintage A320 one aircraft on lease through May 2013.

The ILFC's owned aircraft were manufactured between 2000 and 2005. The majority of them were on lease through 2016 and 2017. The longest lease period was to April 2018, while the shortest was through April 2014.

The Spanair situation definitely did not help what was already a weak lease market for used A320s, according to one trading source.

According to him, the impact to the A321 model may not be as severe since there were only four aircraft available.
"This compares to 24 A320s parked and available with 19 more joining the crowd from Spanair making it 43 total," he comments.
In comparison, the 737-800 available fleet is estimated around 10 aircraft, after Malév released three aircraft earlier this month.
"Expectations are for the Spanair aircraft returns to be sorted out fairly quickly. If they are not it will only further dilute realized payments against claims for Spanair unsecured creditors. While one expects aircraft to be returned fairly quickly, it will take some time for this volume of aircraft to be reabsorbed into airline operations," the trading source said.


Source: Flight Global

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