Originally Posted by
Bluedriver
If you order a new Airbus today, you are probably looking at the first deliveries in 2029 or even 2030. Airbus has a 6,000 order BACKLOG on the A320/321! A new order placed today goes at the end of the line.
We had some really big aircraft delivery numbers for the next few years, some years were 30+ deliveries. They smoothed out the numbers so that we take about 22-24 (I think) a year, to help reduce CAPEX while we rebuild the profitability of the company.
The deferrals I saw today took some of our deliveries from 2024-2027 and moved them to 2028. Have you seen anything showing some of them being moved to 2029-2030? It's possible, but I haven't seen it. As far as I know, even with the deferrals, our orders stop around 2028. And with us planning to retire our oldest A320s, even if that retirement has been extended a bit, once they are gone our current order book results in very little net growth from where we are. Some, but not a lot. And that growth would end permanently in or near 2028. So JB MUST place an order now, if they want to continue taking airplanes and growing post 2028. If they wait another year or two, the delivery dates simply get pushed out even further, 2031, 2032+. They CAN'T wait. And, the price just keeps going up. After the Alaska door blew off, now UAL is considering ditching the MAX-10 order for A321NEOs, driving up demand, driving up prices, and pushing out the delivery availability window even further.
If the undisclosed order isn't JB, we are in real trouble. The plan was Spirit, and Spirits order book. That plan doesn't look like it's gonna work, so they had to have an alternative plan to get jets. It was pretty clear before the ruling came out that JB knew it was blocked. Robin's retirement, Joanna saying in her email "Robin's pursuit of the merger" etc. In fact, that one line was the only thing she said about Spirit in her long "I'm the new CEO" email. They had known since the end of the trial it wasn't going their way. Trial ended Dec 5th. December 21-22 this undisclosed order is placed with Airbus. There are only so many companies that fit that fleet mix (A321s+A220-300s), only so many that need this timing, and only so many reasons to keep the order secret. Most airlines are proud to put their name on these high profile orders, unless they have a good reason not to immediately.
On the investor call today, an analyst asked Ursula how we were able to get Airbus to agree to these deferrals without paying a penalty (there are other reasons right now that could work, but her response was interesting), and she quickly snapped back saying "I don't want to talk more about the deferrals, it was mutually beneficial" with Airbus.
Only a select number of people know who this order is really for, we won't know until the press release, but I'm still fairly certain it's ours. So we wait...