American Airlines (AA, Dallas/Fort Worth) has announced it has effected significant changes to its existing Airbus (AIB, Toulouse Blagnac) and Boeing (BOE, Washington National) order books.

In a statement issued on April 6, the carrier said it was ordering forty-seven B787 Family aircraft from Boeing consisting of twenty-two B787-8s, due to begin arriving in 2020, and twenty-five B787-9s, due to begin arriving in 2023. Among the contenders for the order had been the B787 as well as the A330neo and A350.

“This was a difficult decision between the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A350 and A330neo and we thank both manufacturers for their aggressive efforts to earn more of American’s business. In the end, our goal to simplify our fleet made the 787 a more compelling choice,” President Robert Isom said.

The B787-8s will replace the carrier's existing fleet of twenty-three B767-300(ER)s, while the -9s will replace its nine A330-300s and older B777-200(ER)s. The entire order of new B787s will be powered with General Electric’s GEnx-1B engines.

American currently operates twenty B787-8s and fifteen -9s. It expects to have forty B787s in place by year-end 2018, and forty-two by late 2019. It also holds options for another fifty-two B787s.

In tandem with the B787 announcement, American said it had also reached an agreement with Boeing to defer the delivery of forty B737 MAX aircraft, previously scheduled to arrive between 2020 and 2022, to 2025 and 2026. As of December 31, 2017, American was due to have taken delivery of sixteen B737 MAX in 2018, twenty in 2019, nineteen in 2020, twenty-one in 2021, and twenty in 2022. As such, the revised delivery schedule will allow the carrier to "better align with planned retirements of other narrowbody aircraft".

In light of the new Boeing widebody order, American also confirmed it had now terminated a long-deferred US Airways-era order with Airbus for twenty-two A350-900s.

“Today’s announcement is influenced by our goal to simplify our fleet and reduce the number of aircraft types we operate. Our prior plan would have had us operating five widebody aircraft types, and with today’s announcement, we will soon reduce that to three,” Chief Financial Officer Derek Kerr said. “These new replacement aircraft are consistent with our previous plans for the size of our widebody fleet.”