Etihad Airways has announced that it plans to spend over $1 billion USD retrofitting a number of its aircraft due to supply change delays that continue to blight airliners going into the New Year.
The Abu Dhabi based airline has announced that it plans to start the process by the end of next year, across fifty aircraft, initially focusing on its 787 and 777 fleet, before expanding into its Airbus made aircraft later on. This in turn is part of an already announced 5 year, $7 Billion USD, investment in new aircraft, routes and network changes.
Etihad CEO Antonoaldo Neves said in a statement:
“We’re going to retrofit even the planes that don’t need a retrofit, but we believe it’s important for the airline to have consistency across the fleet.”
A Growing, Global, Problem
In October, Ryanair amongst a number of European airlines, announced that they were likely to have to revise its passenger numbers down for the next year, due to protracted delays to deliveries from Boeing and Airbus.
In a statement, International Air Transport Association (IATA) Director General Willie Walsh said,
“It’s massively frustrating for airline CEOs and it’s having a big impact. It’s going to be a problem I think for a number of years to come. The message I get from airline CEOs is the situation doesn’t look like it’s getting any worse, so it seems to have bottomed out or plateaued, but it’s not yet getting better.”
Meanwhile, in North America, Southwest Airlines have reduced expected deliveries of the already much maligned Boeing 737-MAX aircraft. Having initially anticipated to have 86 aircraft delivered by the end of 2025, between January and October, only 20 have been delivered.
As a result, Southwest announced tat they we were offering voluntary redundancies to all ground staff across 18 airports across its network, as well as some to its staff within its headquarters. This is due to a considerable drop in passenger numbers due to the slower than expected delivery of the 737-Max.
“Southwest has reduced overall capacity to meet demand with a constrained fleet due to aircraft delivery delays. Offering voluntary separation and extended time off to contract and noncontract employees, along with continued slowed hiring, will help us avert overstaffing in certain locations,” Southwest said, in a statement.
Ground staff at Los Angles International, Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson, Dallas/Fort Worth, as well as Miami International, Baltimore International, Detroit Metropolitan, and Cleveland Hopkins will be effected, although Southwest have not declared how many staff will be required to take redundancies. Pilots and Air Crew Will not be affected, however.
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