American Airlines (AA, Dallas/Fort Worth) still has not decided whether to take the twenty-two A350-900s it is scheduled to take from 2020 or drop the order in favour of A330-900s or B787-9s, the carrier's Executive Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer Derek Kerr said during an annual investor call on January 25, 2018.
"The A350 is a great aircraft. But it does add complexity to our fleet by a new aircraft type. So it's not about the aircraft, it's about the complexity that it brings to our operating group for having more aircraft. So we haven't made a determination yet," he said.
American Airlines inherited the A350 order from US Airways (Phoenix Sky Harbor) on their merger in 2013. After having first converted the order from A350-800s to the larger -900 variant in 2013, American then deferred the first delivery from 2017 to 2018, before further deferring it to 2020.
"There is no date that we need to make that decision. I mean the first delivery is not 'til 2020," Kerr underlined.
The A350-900s are scheduled to replace American's A330 fleet of which it currently operates fifteen A330-200s and nine A330-300s. According to the ch-aviation fleets module, the carrier also deploys twenty-three B767-300(ER)s, forty-seven B777-200(ER)s, twenty B777-300(ER)s, twenty B787-8s, and fourteen B787-9s in the wide-body segment.
During the investor call, the carrier also reaffirmed its previously announced plans to retire all twenty E190s, ten MD-82s, and thirty-five MD-83s by the end of 2019.
