Just announced at Dubai Airshow, Indigo Partners has ordered 255 A321neo family aircraft

Breakdown includes

Wizzair - 75 A321neo and 27 A321XLR
Frontier - 92 A321neo
Volaris - 39 A321neo
Jetsmart - 21 A321neo and 2 A321XLR

In addition to this order 38 A320neo from Volaris and Jetsmart order book has been converted into A321neo

https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/pres ... neo-family

They already had 157 321NEO's on order plus 273 320NEO's, so 680 between the 2 orders.

While we have seen Indigo is very well run, that's a lot of aircraft to place.

Oh wow.
It's much about the A321neo these days.
Good thing the A380 production facilities is about to become available.

Feels very unsustainable. Wizzair is flying 150 planes, and now will have 300 on order. They will need to grow a lot. Although I probably would have said the same for Ryanair 20 years ago. Let's wait and see

I think there is a lot of potential for LCC in many mid-income countries, as long as they avoid going overly aggressive on WBs. Wizz focusing on Eastern Europe I can see them doing well as there are still many underserved markets.

Congradulations to Airbus. Man that A321 just keeps gaining roder after order. Simply amazing.

A special thought of how's MOL/Ryanair feeling today.

The ratio of aircraft on order to operating aircraft is perplexing. Do not get me wrong, I see much growth in ULCCs and the A321NEO/xLR has a fine future. This is specifically about Indigo partners. I am a bit skeptical we are not going to head to a recession (we're due and the money printing during the lockdown has consequences, IMHO).

That said, the xLRs make sense (ULCCs will tremendously benefit over prior A321s by integrating the fuel tank). That opens new missions. I'm actually surprised Frontier and Volaris didn't order any and why only two at Jetsmart (I am not a fan of tiny subfleets). I think this order was needed, just more xLR and fewer in total, but that is just my opinion.

Lightsaber

So F9 now has what, almost 190 321neo on order? It’s going to be interesting to see how they develop their network over the next 5-10 years

I wonder how much of this is simply "get your A321neo production slot whilst you still can" kind of situation. Indigo Partners know the aircraft well and know the value it delivers them.

It certainly makes an increase production rate for the A320 family look more likely.

lightsaber wrote:

The ratio of aircraft on order to operating aircraft is perplexing. Do not get me wrong, I see much growth in ULCCs and the A321NEO/xLR has a fine future. This is specifically about Indigo partners. I am a bit skeptical we are not going to head to a recession (we're due and the money printing during the lockdown has consequences, IMHO).

That said, the xLRs make sense (ULCCs will tremendously benefit over prior A321s by integrating the fuel tank). That opens new missions. I'm actually surprised Frontier and Volaris didn't order any and why only two at Jetsmart (I am not a fan of tiny subfleets). I think this order was needed, just more xLR and fewer in total, but that is just my opinion.

Lightsaber

In my opinion and what we see when we consult business is that a recession will not hit ULCCs a lot. Yes the lowest income will stop travelling (which is almost exclusively a group travelling on ULCC) but the middle income group will want to keep their life style but to make the holiday cheaper will switch to ULCCs from main line. Also business travel (mid to low tier travel) will shift to ULCCs as the travel budgets will get cut.

zkojq wrote:

I wonder how much of this is simply "get your A321neo production slot whilst you still can" kind of situation.

That's an interesting question. Speaking to Frontier, planespotters.net shows they have 112 aircraft today - and very young at just 4.1 years avg. One can't argue that a big fraction of those orders will be used for mass replacements as may be the case with UA.

Man, I'm very curious how much of these aircraft actually end up getting delivered. We all see how Air Asia is doing now.

Difference is that Air Asia orders were before the pandemic. How is that even remotely comparable?

Duke91 wrote:

Difference is that Air Asia orders were before the pandemic. How is that even remotely comparable?

And quite some time before it & they are a better run company.

volaris can easily absorb their share. IIRC they are now the largest carrier in Mexico and are quickly taking over all the Interjet capacity. they also need aircraft to take the vacant slots at MEX

Regarding Wizz, it certainly puts them in a good place with regards to Ryanair. With Ryanair's (whose business plan has historically been based around acquiring aircraft at an extremely low cost) intention of acquiring MAX10s seemingly having been curtailed by Boeing being firmer than expected on price, and negotiations with Airbus for A321neos having never gotten off the ground, the airline's growth plans would seem to be in question. They've got ~200 MAXs on order to replace ~400 737-800s. Looks like Boeing might get their way regarding pricing if/when an order happens.

It will be interesting to see where Wizz opens new bases as they expand Westwards.

It’s go big or go home for lccs. Somebody at EasyJet needs to wake up soon.

Plenty of room for growth in the Balkans, Ukraine and other ex-Soviet republics in the Caucasus.

I know there is no connection in the companies but can we just acknowledge for a second that between Indigo Partners and Indigo (the Indian airline) airbus has over 1000 A320 family orders.

Galwayman wrote:

It’s go big or go home for lccs. Somebody at EasyJet needs to wake up soon.

I wouldn't strongly disagree with your contention that lccs need scale but it's not really a binary choice. There are a few ways for lccs to build a network, some below:

1. Surgically, seeking out airport pairs where legacies demand too high an avg fare (Let's call this the Breeze method.) See 'business route' adds at an airport like EWR where UA has been the dominant (or only) carrier. JetBlue smells the money.

2. Surgically 2, seeking out airport pairs where marginally lower fares will stimulate demand (in the U.S. the common example is Florida beaches + Orlando) That's what Spirit has been doing for decades.

3. What looks at first glance a little too randomly, but with quick retreats when a route underperforms (IMHO, that's been Frontier's method for a few years).

4. Rapidly to everywhere, hoping you become a viable alternative to the legacies on a major fraction of route pairs, building scale and yields -- before you run out of money. Southwest didn't do it quickly but they have achieved scale and coverage thoroughly.

I know easyjet's (tepid) growth trajectory but don't know it well enough to try to slot it into one of the growth strategies above.

With the legacies, add:

1. Fill-in-the-blanks at superhubs, fueling both more connections and lower costs from upgauging. See ATL, DFW, IST, DXB.

2. Find routes that are available only as connections today on which a decent fraction of passengers will pay a meaningful non-stop premium. I'll cite United's TPAC network, and routes like EWR-CPT as examples.

There’s an additional aspect to this - the financing dimension. The sale & lease-back market is very hot, with very tight yields on good asset & good credit combinations. These airlines are generally regarded as good credits, and often receive a higher consideration for an aircraft under SLB than they paid for it, realising a gain. Therefore, beyond maintenance and reliability issues, they are incentivised to hold on to aircraft for as little as possible (typically 8 years) and repeat the process.

This reminds me of the US Air Airbus order in the 1990’s, although this Indigo Partners order seems more reasonable when you consider how it is divided amongst the operators. Does anyone have any information on how the 120 firm orders, and 280 options either survived, or perished in subsequent the US Air mergers? https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct- ... story.html

lightsaber wrote:

That said, the xLRs make sense (ULCCs will tremendously benefit over prior A321s by integrating the fuel tank). That opens new missions. I'm actually surprised Frontier and Volaris didn't order any and why only two at Jetsmart (I am not a fan of tiny subfleets). I think this order was needed, just more xLR and fewer in total, but that is just my opinion.

Frontier has got already 18 XLRs on order. JetSmart had 12, now it's 14 altogether. Wizz has now 47 in total. Volaris has indeed none.

The reason for Volaris not ordering XLRs seems to be: There are not really routes with demand especially for Mexicans. Lima and whole Colombia can be done with a normal A320/321.

The XLR range is enough for Bolivia, Paraguay, French Guiana, Alaska, North Western Canada, Brasilia. I see rather low demand there. Just Santiago de Chile could be interesting. I doubt a fully loaded 230-seater XLR can fly from MEX to Rio, Sao Paulo or Buenos Aires.

zkojq wrote:

Regarding Wizz, it certainly puts them in a good place with regards to Ryanair. With Ryanair's (whose business plan has historically been based around acquiring aircraft at an extremely low cost) intention of acquiring MAX10s seemingly having been curtailed by Boeing being firmer than expected on price, and negotiations with Airbus for A321neos having never gotten off the ground, the airline's growth plans would seem to be in question. They've got ~200 MAXs on order to replace ~400 737-800s. Looks like Boeing might get their way regarding pricing if/when an order happens.

It will be interesting to see where Wizz opens new bases as they expand Westwards.

Ryanair can put off the day they need to order by sending planes for heavy maintenance in Winter and keeping them for longer than they originally intended. I'm not saying it is what they want to do but it is the obvious next option for them if they can't get planes at the price they want.
Wizz only has some initiative if they are getting their planes cheap enough. We don't have those details. The cost of heavy maintenance on a 737 would be well known in the industry and you'd assume Ryanair can negotiate discounts based on volumes of planes they could send for heavy maintenance.

They have also done targeted sale and leaseback when it suited them while waiting for planes to arrive so they can work around their "problem".

11C wrote:

This reminds me of the US Air Airbus order in the 1990’s, although this Indigo Partners order seems more reasonable when you consider how it is divided amongst the operators. Does anyone have any information on how the 120 firm orders, and 280 options either survived, or perished in subsequent the US Air mergers? https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct- ... story.html

US Airways didn't quite hit the 400 total for Airbus' planes, but prior to the merger with AA they had over 300 Airbus planes in their fleet, with more deliveries that that were scheduled after the merger.

https://www.planespotters.net/airline/US-Airways

Today, AA has 440 Airbus aircraft in their fleet and growing...

https://www.planespotters.net/airline/American-Airlines

As for Indigo, I imagine this new A321N/XLR order will get tweaked along the way. For example, Indigo had ordered A319N's back in 2017, but have since converted those to either A320N's, or A321N's.

airlinenavigato wrote:

lightsaber wrote:

That said, the xLRs make sense (ULCCs will tremendously benefit over prior A321s by integrating the fuel tank). That opens new missions. I'm actually surprised Frontier and Volaris didn't order any and why only two at Jetsmart (I am not a fan of tiny subfleets). I think this order was needed, just more xLR and fewer in total, but that is just my opinion.

Frontier has got already 18 XLRs on order. JetSmart had 12, now it's 14 altogether. Wizz has now 47 in total. Volaris has indeed none.

The reason for Volaris not ordering XLRs seems to be: There are not really routes with demand especially for Mexicans. Lima and whole Colombia can be done with a normal A320/321.

The XLR range is enough for Bolivia, Paraguay, French Guiana, Alaska, North Western Canada, Brasilia. I see rather low demand there. Just Santiago de Chile could be interesting. I doubt a fully loaded 230-seater XLR can fly from MEX to Rio, Sao Paulo or Buenos Aires.

I don´t see Y4 serving SCL, GRU or EZE, yet alone nonstop from MEX, any time in the near future. Volaris has a lot of potential in Central America, Norhern Southamerica and the Carribbean as well within it´s traditional Mexico domestic and USA markets.

PhilipBass wrote:

zkojq wrote:

Regarding Wizz, it certainly puts them in a good place with regards to Ryanair. With Ryanair's (whose business plan has historically been based around acquiring aircraft at an extremely low cost) intention of acquiring MAX10s seemingly having been curtailed by Boeing being firmer than expected on price, and negotiations with Airbus for A321neos having never gotten off the ground, the airline's growth plans would seem to be in question. They've got ~200 MAXs on order to replace ~400 737-800s. Looks like Boeing might get their way regarding pricing if/when an order happens.

It will be interesting to see where Wizz opens new bases as they expand Westwards.

Ryanair can put off the day they need to order by sending planes for heavy maintenance in Winter and keeping them for longer than they originally intended. I'm not saying it is what they want to do but it is the obvious next option for them if they can't get planes at the price they want.
Wizz only has some initiative if they are getting their planes cheap enough. We don't have those details. The cost of heavy maintenance on a 737 would be well known in the industry and you'd assume Ryanair can negotiate discounts based on volumes of planes they could send for heavy maintenance.

They have also done targeted sale and leaseback when it suited them while waiting for planes to arrive so they can work around their "problem".

Ryanair won't get planes at the prices MOL dreamed for, simply because while MOL was busy bragging right and left, the market recovered. We recently heard MOL bragging again, only to get a "Shut up!" answer from Boeing.

What's more: nobody heard Indigo Partners’ boss bragging about ordering 255 aircraft, until it was done. We can be sure, a potential order of such a magnitude was treated very carefully by both Airbus and Boeing, and Indigo Partners had all the freedom to negotiate with them and play them against each other in machiavellic style, which MOL is fond of.
I want to say there was no difference with MOL's huge pending order. Save the bragging.

So, Indigo Partners achieved what MOL failed. The best deal. Quietly.
All these planes will serve to slowly eating at Ryanair's market.

Once upon a time, during market downturn, MOL made himself a name with his bragging.
Nowadays, in recovering/stable market, clever hyenas are silent hyenas. MOL could not adapt.
Maybe it’s the beginning of the end of Ryanair’s dominance. Il would become “another big LCC” instead of “the LCC leader”.

Volaris has an almost perfect scenario for a A321NEO fleet, and with Interjet gone, they have room to grow.

You need a lot of mid range segments, to maximize the fuel savings of added capacity/new engines.
And people often underestimate the amount of domestic routes with 2.5 - 3.5 hrs flight time, that support at least 2x daily flights. . MEX-TIJ, GDL-TIJ, GDL-CUN, CUN-MTY, TIJ-BJX, MXL-MEX, CJS-MEX, TIJ-PVR, HMP-MEX, TIJ-MLM, TIJ-MTY etc.
On top of that, a pretoria of international routes fall in the same range, with a healthy mix of VFR, tourism + some business across the border.

TaromA380 wrote:

So, Indigo Partners achieved what MOL failed. The best deal. Quietly..

You have no idea what price those planes sold at so it is hard to be Triumphalist about the deal

PhilipBass wrote:

Wizz only has some initiative if they are getting their planes cheap enough. We don't have those details.

If buying jets 255 at a time doesn't get you a bulk discount then I don't know what will.

TaromA380 wrote:

So, Indigo Partners achieved what MOL failed. The best deal. Quietly.
All these planes will serve to slowly eating at Ryanair's market.

Once upon a time, during market downturn, MOL made himself a name with his bragging.
Nowadays, in recovering/stable market, clever hyenas are silent hyenas. MOL could not adapt.
Maybe it’s the beginning of the end of Ryanair’s dominance. Il would become “another big LCC” instead of “the LCC leader”.

Well said. It amuses me to see people trying to spin the order as somehow not a good thing.

CMA727 wrote:

airlinenavigato wrote:

lightsaber wrote:

That said, the xLRs make sense (ULCCs will tremendously benefit over prior A321s by integrating the fuel tank). That opens new missions. I'm actually surprised Frontier and Volaris didn't order any and why only two at Jetsmart (I am not a fan of tiny subfleets). I think this order was needed, just more xLR and fewer in total, but that is just my opinion.

Frontier has got already 18 XLRs on order. JetSmart had 12, now it's 14 altogether. Wizz has now 47 in total. Volaris has indeed none.

The reason for Volaris not ordering XLRs seems to be: There are not really routes with demand especially for Mexicans. Lima and whole Colombia can be done with a normal A320/321.

The XLR range is enough for Bolivia, Paraguay, French Guiana, Alaska, North Western Canada, Brasilia. I see rather low demand there. Just Santiago de Chile could be interesting. I doubt a fully loaded 230-seater XLR can fly from MEX to Rio, Sao Paulo or Buenos Aires.

I don´t see Y4 serving SCL, GRU or EZE, yet alone nonstop from MEX, any time in the near future. Volaris has a lot of potential in Central America, Norhern Southamerica and the Carribbean as well within it´s traditional Mexico domestic and USA markets.

equals my opinion. without XLR or A330/787 Volaris cannot reach these airports anyway.

I'm actually looking forward to Volaris or VivaAerobus flights to the Dominican Republic.

rbavfan wrote:

Duke91 wrote:

Difference is that Air Asia orders were before the pandemic. How is that even remotely comparable?

And quite some time before it & they are a better run company.

Hang on, Air Asia is a better run company than Indigo Partners and it's airlines ?

JetSmart has now a fleet of 19 and orders for 96.

Sky Airline has 25 aircraft and just 17 on order.

I wonder if Sky counters that and buys new planes near term. As yet they are Chile's number two.

log0008 wrote:

I know there is no connection in the companies but can we just acknowledge for a second that between Indigo Partners and Indigo (the Indian airline) airbus has over 1000 A320 family orders.

It's funny that the two Indigo's- IndiGo airlines and Indigo Partners- would be each now having one of the largest Airbus A320neo family backlog.
Ofcourse with IndiGo, it's all for one airline. Whereas for Indigo partners it's split between their four airlines.

Indigo Partners' carriers also tend to sell and lease back their carriers. For instance, Frontier owns a grand total of one plane in its fleet (an A20N). I suspect that these will be all sold and leased back upon delivery.

Also, at first, I read this as IndiGo (6E) was placing another order...wondering how many more planes they can take.

avier wrote:

log0008 wrote:

I know there is no connection in the companies but can we just acknowledge for a second that between Indigo Partners and Indigo (the Indian airline) airbus has over 1000 A320 family orders.

It's funny that the two Indigo's- IndiGo airlines and Indigo Partners- would be each now having one of the largest Airbus A320neo family backlog.
Ofcourse with IndiGo, it's all for one airline. Whereas for Indigo partners it's split between their four airlines.

The question is what names they would go by if they ever merge: Indigo or IndiGo?

Duke91 wrote:

avier wrote:

log0008 wrote:

I know there is no connection in the companies but can we just acknowledge for a second that between Indigo Partners and Indigo (the Indian airline) airbus has over 1000 A320 family orders.

It's funny that the two Indigo's- IndiGo airlines and Indigo Partners- would be each now having one of the largest Airbus A320neo family backlog.
Ofcourse with IndiGo, it's all for one airline. Whereas for Indigo partners it's split between their four airlines.

The question is what names they would go by if they ever merge: Indigo or IndiGo?

IndigoGo.

In all seriously there was a period where I though IndiGo was an Indigo partners airline.

Some still view Wizz as an Eastern European carrier. But they have long branched out, and this too a bigger extent than Ryanair and easyJet. They have set up, for example, Wizz Abu Dhabi and are already eyeing India. In that sense, Indigo is really moving in the direction of becoming a global LCC, albeit (at this point) with four different brands. If this is sustainable - who knows?

zkojq wrote:

Well said. It amuses me to see people trying to spin the order as somehow not a good thing.

As a shareholder in Airbus I'm delighted to see planes being ordered.
As a shareholder in Ryanair I'm happy that Ryanair won't buy planes "at any price" and concentrate on keeping their cost base as the lowest in the industry and are avoiding leveraging themselves which doesn't benefit their shareholders. It remains to be seen if Indigo can deploy those planes profitably whereas Ryanair has an established network which will continue to generate profits for them irrespective of whether it is being served with brand new 737 8200s or 15 year old 737-800s.

rbavfan wrote:

Duke91 wrote:

Difference is that Air Asia orders were before the pandemic. How is that even remotely comparable?

And quite some time before it & they are a better run company.

This week's 'funniest post' award goes to...

lightsaber wrote:

The ratio of aircraft on order to operating aircraft is perplexing. Do not get me wrong, I see much growth in ULCCs and the A321NEO/xLR has a fine future. This is specifically about Indigo partners. I am a bit skeptical we are not going to head to a recession (we're due and the money printing during the lockdown has consequences, IMHO).

That said, the xLRs make sense (ULCCs will tremendously benefit over prior A321s by integrating the fuel tank). That opens new missions. I'm actually surprised Frontier and Volaris didn't order any and why only two at Jetsmart (I am not a fan of tiny subfleets). I think this order was needed, just more xLR and fewer in total, but that is just my opinion.

Lightsaber

There is always the option that Indigo Partner starts another venture and allocates from existing order books and /or simply moves orders between the airlines it holds stakes in to whereever equipment is needed or moves forward with a leasing arm. With the size they are now they simply have more options are available than others.

Flying-Tiger wrote:

lightsaber wrote:

The ratio of aircraft on order to operating aircraft is perplexing. Do not get me wrong, I see much growth in ULCCs and the A321NEO/xLR has a fine future. This is specifically about Indigo partners. I am a bit skeptical we are not going to head to a recession (we're due and the money printing during the lockdown has consequences, IMHO).

That said, the xLRs make sense (ULCCs will tremendously benefit over prior A321s by integrating the fuel tank). That opens new missions. I'm actually surprised Frontier and Volaris didn't order any and why only two at Jetsmart (I am not a fan of tiny subfleets). I think this order was needed, just more xLR and fewer in total, but that is just my opinion.

Lightsaber

There is always the option that Indigo Partner starts another venture and allocates from existing order books and /or simply moves orders between the airlines it holds stakes in to whereever equipment is needed or moves forward with a leasing arm. With the size they are now they simply have more options are available than others.

It’s a bit more complicated then that. Indigo Partners does not have full ownership over all the airlines and the contracts are technically with the airlines, not Indigo Partners.

According to Wikipedia, F9 still has 75 A320N's and 10 A321CEO's remaining to be delivered from their 2017 order. I wonder if a large portion of the A320N future deliveries and all of the planned A321CEO's will be converted to A321N's as part of this more recent order?

https://www.planespotters.net/airline/Frontier-Airlines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Airlines

FLALEFTY wrote:

According to Wikipedia, F9 still has 75 A320N's and 10 A321CEO's remaining to be delivered from their 2017 order. I wonder if a large portion of the A320N future deliveries and all of the planned A321CEO's will be converted to A321N's as part of this more recent order?

https://www.planespotters.net/airline/Frontier-Airlines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Airlines

Don't think Frontier has any more A321ceo due as the last A321ceo produced MSN 10315, destined to Delta as N129DN is just about to get into the air. Thereafter Airbus will transition completely to neo family. Unless those 10 A321ceo are coming from her sister companies...

RoyalBrunei757 wrote:

FLALEFTY wrote:

According to Wikipedia, F9 still has 75 A320N's and 10 A321CEO's remaining to be delivered from their 2017 order. I wonder if a large portion of the A320N future deliveries and all of the planned A321CEO's will be converted to A321N's as part of this more recent order?

https://www.planespotters.net/airline/Frontier-Airlines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Airlines

Don't think Frontier has any more A321ceo due as the last A321ceo produced MSN 10315, destined to Delta as N129DN is just about to get into the air. Thereafter Airbus will transition completely to neo family. Unless those 10 A321ceo are coming from her sister companies...

It seems that F9 does sale/leaseback deals, apparently on 3-year terms. I would expect that the 2017 plans for 10 more A321CEO's won't happen (I bet they were originally due for delivery in 2020, but were deferred). This fits with your point that the "last of the line" of the A321CEO's has already been built & it is not for F9. There are 18 A320CEO's & 21 A321CEO's left in their fleet (seemingly all-leased) that will probably be cycled out quickly when future deliveries of A320N's and A321N's happen.

FLALEFTY wrote:

RoyalBrunei757 wrote:

FLALEFTY wrote:

According to Wikipedia, F9 still has 75 A320N's and 10 A321CEO's remaining to be delivered from their 2017 order. I wonder if a large portion of the A320N future deliveries and all of the planned A321CEO's will be converted to A321N's as part of this more recent order?

https://www.planespotters.net/airline/Frontier-Airlines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Airlines

Don't think Frontier has any more A321ceo due as the last A321ceo produced MSN 10315, destined to Delta as N129DN is just about to get into the air. Thereafter Airbus will transition completely to neo family. Unless those 10 A321ceo are coming from her sister companies...

It seems that F9 does sale/leaseback deals, apparently on 3-year terms. I would expect that the 2017 plans for 10 more A321CEO's won't happen (I bet they were originally due for delivery in 2020, but were deferred). This fits with your point that the "last of the line" of the A321CEO's has already been built & it is not for F9. There are 18 A320CEO's & 21 A321CEO's left in their fleet (seemingly all-leased) that will probably be cycled out quickly when future deliveries of A320N's and A321N's happen.

The 10 A321ceos are used planes F9 are leasing from existing lessors, they haven’t specified who the original owner of the frames are. The deal was announced with their 2nd quarter results back in August but didn’t get much attention here: https://www.ch-aviation.com/portal/news ... -ten-a321s

Polot wrote:

FLALEFTY wrote:

RoyalBrunei757 wrote:

Don't think Frontier has any more A321ceo due as the last A321ceo produced MSN 10315, destined to Delta as N129DN is just about to get into the air. Thereafter Airbus will transition completely to neo family. Unless those 10 A321ceo are coming from her sister companies...

It seems that F9 does sale/leaseback deals, apparently on 3-year terms. I would expect that the 2017 plans for 10 more A321CEO's won't happen (I bet they were originally due for delivery in 2020, but were deferred). This fits with your point that the "last of the line" of the A321CEO's has already been built & it is not for F9. There are 18 A320CEO's & 21 A321CEO's left in their fleet (seemingly all-leased) that will probably be cycled out quickly when future deliveries of A320N's and A321N's happen.

The 10 A321ceos are used planes F9 are leasing from existing lessors, they haven’t specified who the original owner of the frames are. The deal was announced with their 2nd quarter results back in August but didn’t get much attention here: https://www.ch-aviation.com/portal/news ... -ten-a321s

I wonder if these 10 F9 A321CEO's will be former Wizz Air planes? Maybe Indigo is moving them around?

Nope, the 10 will be NEOs. From the 10Q:

"During July 2021, the Company signed a letter of intent with two of its leasing partners to add ten additional A321neo aircraft through direct leases, with deliveries beginning in the second half of 2022 and continuing into the first half of 2023"

NEO's but even internal to the company they haven't said where they're coming from. Might even be whitetails, who knows.

Pontius wrote:

Nope, the 10 will be NEOs. From the 10Q:

"During July 2021, the Company signed a letter of intent with two of its leasing partners to add ten additional A321neo aircraft through direct leases, with deliveries beginning in the second half of 2022 and continuing into the first half of 2023"

NEO's but even internal to the company they haven't said where they're coming from. Might even be whitetails, who knows.

Interestingly if you look at the August 10Q it doesn’t specify A321neo, instead it says just A321 aircraft. F9 usually distinguishes between A319/A320/A321 (meaning the ceos) and A320neo/A321neo in its reports-that was the basis of the assumption that they were Ceos. The rest of the paragraph describing the deal is largely the same.

So I guess nobody really noticed the updated wording from new report filed the other week and F9 does not have 10 more A321ceos coming.