Originally Posted by
PoppaJo
There is a reason not many hang onto 20 year old Airbus machines. Because they are absolutely useless pieces of junk that can barely sit idle overnight without something going wrong. I wouldn’t even give them freighter conversions!
Engineers have nightmares once they get to 10 years old let alone 20!
ok maybe not 25 yos, maybe 5 to 10 years. The point being, plenty of cheap aircraft around, some not that old.
Look at Allegiant in USA. They bought a heap of old Mad Dogs for nothing (reportedly around US$1m each), didn't fly them hard, had lots of back up aircraft around the country, just in case. Used some for spares. (bit like Alliance & their old fokkers) They didn't even bother flying many at all on Tuesday, as why bother.
Just say you could lease an 8 yo A320 for a 1/4 of a near new one. So you could have (nearly) 4 for price of 1 newish one. Plan to 3 flying with 1 backup is huge % & 3 x numbers of seats that can sell. 3 x the frequency. Nearly as statement is a bit simplistic & doesn't take into account other factors.