Originally Posted by
No Idea Either
Thanks Crosscutter, I didn’t know that QF owned their domestic fleet. But what about the wide bodies, and the upcoming (later this year?) Neo payments.
Most of the 787s are owned although a couple were sold and leased back with BOC Aviation at the start of the pandemic to bring in some cash. The A380s are owned too and no bank/lessor in their right mind would touch them now, but as they are subject to large writefdowns, their ownership costs will reduce dramatically in coming years. A330s are all owned, the few that were leased from CIT (now Avolon) were returned some years ago.
As for the neos, from memory they were out in the market looking at some SLB options a while back, and as they are an in-demand asset the lessors will still put some attractive deals together. My guess is that in most cases Qantas has paid the pre-delivery payments in cash and could therefore get some value from doing SLBs if they needed to, but there are also benefits to having new jets on the balance sheet. If there are concerns about new jets sucking too much cash out they will defer their later deliveries and just rely on SLBs or finance leases to take those that they are contractually obliged to take.