Originally Posted by
FriendlyPilot
Maybe a combination. From the article...
"United has reportedly been in talks with Airbus recently to obtain production slots left vacant by JetBlue (
JBLU) and Spirit (
SAVE) after the two carries postponed orders for the A320 aircraft. The new Airbus aircraft are due to be delivered between 2025 and 2027"
Were Spirit and JetBlue going to lease those planes or buy them? If they were going to buy them, then United is probably going to buy those specific planes and then lease the rest. it needs to be at least 200-250 if they are going to replace the Max10 entirely.
At this point the MAX 7 and 10 are both the equivalent of vaporware as far as certification is concerned and it looks like there will have to be. Complete rebuild of the BA QA program before the certification can even take place. Most of the out-year 320 family builds can be flipped around between models. NK had a whole bunch of 319 NEOs on order that they converted to 320s. There is enough parts commonality between the models that is not really all that difficult for airframes that have not yet started construction so converting those for 2025 and later to 321 builds may not be all that difficult.