LATAM immediately cutting 19 leased aircraft from fleet

LATAM Airlines Group has identified 19 leased aircraft which it will cut from its operators’ fleets, following the company’s filing for US Chapter 11 creditor protection.

Six long-haul jets – comprising two Airbus A350-900s and four Boeing 787-9s – are among the aircraft listed in the filing. The remainder is made up of various Airbus single-aisle types. Ten of the jets are Chilean-registered, the other nine are Brazilian.

LATAM’s filing states that the debtors’ fleet totals 320 aircraft of which 213 are under finance leases, another 98 are under operating leases, and nine are unencumbered.

It adds that it has been “undertaking a review” of the fleet to account for the current air transport crisis as well as future demand.

LATAM has already decided, however, that it has a number of “excess aircraft” which are “no longer accretive” to its business, adding that maintaining these unnecessary aircraft leases would impose significant insurance and servicing costs.

“As such, the debtors are seeking to reject and shed those onerous [lease] agreements,” its filing states.

It has requested rejection of the leases from 26 May, with the exception of the four 787-9s for which LATAM is seeking rejection from 3 June.

While most of the aircraft have co-located engines, a number of airframes have powerplants which are undergoing work in maintenance facilities – such as Rolls-Royce’s centres in Hong Kong, Derby and Singapore for some of the A350s and 787s, while an A319 is listed as having one engine at Israel’s IAI and the other with Lufthansa Technik in Tulsa.

LATAM had recently cancelled orders for 10 A350-900s and -1000s according to Airbus’s backlog data for March 2020.