One of the people pretty close to this had told me that they had a deal with the leasing company based on taking certain airframes which included those with an "incident history". Obviously that couldn't be the entire fleet as (probably thankfully) there aren't enough aircraft in that category, but it was very much a case of getting the terms they wanted only if specific airframes were part of the package.
I can't say how or if that might have changed since then. The statement of having the pick of the bunch was nonsense at the time it was made though.