American Airlines (AA, Dallas/Fort Worth) has pushed back deliveries of five A321-200neo originally due to join the carrier's fleet this year to 2020 due to the delays at the manufacturer, Chief Financial Officer Derek Kerr said during the quarterly earnings call.
As it stands, the carrier plans to take twelve A321neo in 2019 (including two that have already been delivered) and a further twenty in 2020. In total, it had 100 on order from Airbus of which ninety-eight still await deliveries.
American Airlines launched A321neo operations in early April 2019. For the entire month of April, it deployed the first aircraft, N400AN (msn 8647) exclusively between Orlando International and Phoenix Sky Harbor, although in early May it also started using it on other routes. The second unit, N401AN (msn 8701) entered revenue service in late April and is based out of Phoenix.
The carrier has temporarily grounded fourteen B737-800s "for remediation work following the installation of new aircraft interiors". It was also affected by the grounding of the B737-8 type as it operated twenty-four such aircraft. As a result of all these developments, AA's capacity growth will slow down by 0.5 percentage points to 2.5% in 2019.
Besides ten more A321neo, American Airlines also plans to take sixteen B737 MAX 8s, eleven CRJ900s, and thirteen E175s in 2019.
