Airbus (AIB, Toulouse Blagnac) has stalled the deliveries of at least six A330 twinjets for HNA Group carriers, including Hainan Airlines (HU, Haikou), Capital Airlines (China) (JD, Beijing Daxing International), and Tianjin Airlines (GS, Tianjin), due to a lack of payments received from the Chinese airlines, Reuters has reported.
According to the newswire, the six widebody jets are parked at Toulouse Blagnac. Airbus has reportedly decided to withdraw the deliveries for the time being as it did not want to finance the aircraft out of its own pockets.
While the HNA Group airlines from mainland China themselves do not have any unfilled A330 orders with Airbus, its Hong Kong based leasing unit Hong Kong International Aviation Leasing still has four A330-300s on order from the manufacturer.
Hong Kong Airlines, another HNA Group unit, has nine A330-300s and fifteen A350-900s on order with Airbus.
The logjam is in the process of being resolved but it is unclear when the aircraft could be delivered.
According to the ch-aviation fleets module, all three airlines are already heavy Airbus operators. Hainan Airlines currently operates nine A330-200s and seventeen A330-300s, in addition over 150 Boeing B737 narrowbodies and twenty-six B787s. Capital Airlines operates twenty A319-100s, thirty-three A320-200s, seventeen A321-200s, four A330-200s, and five A330-300s. Finally, Tianjin Airlines operates twenty-nine A320-200s, five A320neos, a single A321-200, and four A330-200s, as well as forty-nine Embraer regional jets.
The Chinese conglomerate has been facing a serious liquidity crunch over the last few months caused primarily by HNA Group's shopping spree which saw it spend some USD50 billion on aviation, travel, retail, and property assets around the world in the last three years. The group's holdings include Avolon, Gategroup, Servair, SR Technics and CIT Aerospace along with multiple other travel, property, logistics and financial firms. It either owns or holds stakes in Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras, TAP Air Portugal, Virgin Australia, Comair (South Africa), Frankfurt Hahn, and Rio de Janeiro International airport, Hilton Worldwide Holdings, Swiss travel retailer Dufry, and Deutsche Bank, as well as many Chinese carriers, among others.
In November 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported the conglomerate had amassed a total of USD100 billion in debt, of which an estimated USD20 billion are due to mature by the end of 2019. HNA Group, whose ownership structure is notoriously obscure and complicated, has been trying to sell some USD6 billion worth of assets earlier this year although it has for now dropped plans to list its Swiss units Gategroup and Swissport.
In 2017, reports surfaced about numerous HNA Group member airlines being late on lease payments, although no aircraft were withdrawn at that time.
On July 3, HNA Group's Wang Jian died in an apparent accident in France when he fell out of a window, reportedly while posing for a photo. Co-founder Chen Feng was subsequently named as the group's new chairman.
