American Airlines has retired its 15 Airbus A330-200 aircraft as part of its ongoing fleet simplification programme amid the coronavirus pandemic. The airline had retired four of its aircraft types earlier this year: its Boeing 757s (34 aircraft), Boeing 767s (17 aircraft), Airbus A330-300s (nine aircraft), Embraer 190s (20 aircraft) and Bombardier CRJ-200 (19 aircraft). “With the permanent retirement of our A330-200 fleet announced this morning we now have only four aircraft types in our mainline fleet: 737, A320 family, 787 and 777,” American’s finance chief Derek Kerr said during the carrier’s22 July third-quarter earnings call. “Fleet reductions is [an] area where we will see significant savings.” American’s A330-200s have an average age of 8.9 years, Cirium fleets data shows. The Fort Worth-based carrier has also secured from Boeing the rights to defer deliveries on eight of its 737 Max deliveries in 2021 and all 10 of its 737 Max deliveries in 2022. “If the deferral rights are ultimately exercised, these aircraft can be deferred to the second half of 2023 through the first quarter of 2024,” Kerr says. “To avoid exercising these deferral rights we would need to see substantial improvement in the demand environment.” American has 217 aircraft on order: 97 Airbus A321neos, 76 737 Max 8 jets and 44 787-8/9s.

Source: Cirium

Airbus has delivered the first USA-built A220, handing over an A220-300 to Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines. The milestone, announced by Airbus on 22 October, comes 14 months after the company began manufacturing the type at the Alabama site where it also produces A320s. Airbus Americas chief executive Jeffrey Knittel calls the delivery a “historic moment that highlights Airbus’ growing industrial footprint in North America”. In July 2018, Airbus acquired the A220 program (then called the C Series program) from Bombardier. Airbus quickly moved forward with a plan to open a second A220 production facility in Mobile. The airframer also makes A220s at a primary manufacturing site in Mirabel, Quebec. Airbus began construction of the new A220 facility in Mobile in January 2019, and started producing A220s there in August 2019. The first Mobile-built A220 flew in June. Airbus says it has trained some 400 US employees to work on A220s. Delta has ordered 95 A220s, more than any other airline. It has 22 of the jets in service, nine in storage and another 64 on order, plus options for a further 50. As of the end of September, Airbus had delivered 123 A220s globally and had another 516 on order.

Source: Cirium

Iranian investigators are probing the serious uncontained failure of a Fokker 100 engine which forced the crew to abort take-off from Tehran’s Mehrabad airport. The Iran Aseman Airlines jet (EP-ATE) had been operating a service to Ardabil, near the Caspian Sea coast in northwestern Iran, on 13 October. Preliminary investigation by the Iranian Civil Aviation Organisation has determined that flight EP3962 left the gate at 14:45 and commenced its take-off roll from runway 29L. Around 500m into the run, at an airspeed of 91kt, the right-hand Rolls-Royce Tay 650-15 engine sustained damage. “Engine efficiency parameters immediately reduced,” says the inquiry. As the aircraft was still travelling below the V1 decision-speed threshold, the crew aborted the departure. Analysis of the engine showed that the failure in the area of the high-pressure turbine had caused turbine blades and other parts to be ejected from the engine, penetrating the nacelle. Some of these parts pierced and entered the fuselage.“Despite the proximity of one of the flight attendants to the incident location inside the cabin, fortunately no injuries were inflicted on anyone,” the inquiry states. Flight recorders from the aircraft – which was transporting 87 passengers and seven crew members – were retrieved for assessment by the Civil Aviation Organisation. The aircraft is listed by fleet data as a 1990 airframe originally delivered to the Swedish arm of Braathens in 1993. Details of the engines’ usage and maintenance have not yet been disclosed by the inquiry. But the Iranian investigators suggest there are similarities with the fatal accident involving a TAM Fokker 100 (PT-MRN) which suffered uncontained engine failure in flight on 15 September 2001. The twinjet had been en route at 31,000ft from Recife to Campinas, and was 70nm from Belo Horizonte when the accident occurred, with the fan disc and the first three stages of the compressor separating. High-energy parts penetrated the cabin, fatally injuring a passenger in window seat row 19, who was hit by fragments of a stator vane disc. Three other passengers were also struck. Brazilian investigation authority CENIPA concluded that two to five fan blades had initially failed, and that the failure appeared related to fatigue induced by flutter. It said examination of the blade roots and the profile of engine damage was similar, in turn, to that arising from two prior Tay events on 5 December 1995 and 29 August 1997. The TAM inquiry posited that the routine use of maximum reverse-thrust during operations at Rio de Janeiro’s Santos Dumont airport might have resulted in exposure to engine thrust in a critical range, inducing fatigue cracks. Iran’s Civil Aviation Organisation says “further investigations” on the engine are needed, and that – given the previous fatal accident – it is notifying Dutch, German and UK counterparts of the Iran Aseman event.

Source: Cirium