The Seattle-based carrier announced on its first-quarter earnings call April 20 that it would retire its last remaining Airbus jets in September.
Those plans became formalized over the weekend when Alaska removed the Airbus A321neo, or "new engine option," jets from its schedules as of Sept. 30, as flagged by Twitter user @IshrionA and confirmed in Cirium schedules.
Alaska currently has 10 Airbus A321neos in its fleet. At its peak, the airline flew 72 Airbus jets — a mix of the A319, A320 and A321 variants — but the A319s and A320s have already been retired, leaving the carrier with just 10 A321neos.
Alaska acquired all of these Airbus planes as part of its 2016 takeover of Virgin America. Alaska took delivery of the A321neo jets between 2018 and 2019 as part of an order that was originally placed by Virgin.
The carrier couldn't easily get out of the order, so it took the planes, despite historically being an all-Boeing carrier.
However, last year, the airline announced that it would simplify its fleet and retire all Airbus aircraft by the end of 2023.
By exclusively flying mainline Boeing jets, Alaska can streamline the pilot training and maintenance processes while also boosting operational flexibility, among other economic benefits. (Meanwhile, Alaska's wholly owned regional subsidiary Horizon Air will exclusively fly Embraer E-175 jets.)
Back in the day, Alaska Airlines was exclusively an all-Boeing carrier, and its planes even wore a "proudly all Boeing" decal on the nose. Over the years, the carrier added MD-80 and Airbus jets into its mainline fleet, but in the coming months, that tagline will once again be completely true.
Alaska currently flies 211 Boeing 737s, according to Airfleets.net, and it has orders for 146 new Boeing 737 MAX aircraft scheduled for delivery between 2024 and 2027.
As for the retired A321neos, which are just about 5 years old, those will likely head to other airlines. It isn't immediately clear which carrier will pick them up, but with frequent delivery delays for new airplanes, it wouldn't be surprising to see them acquired quite quickly.
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