American nears decision on MD-80 successor

[Ari707]

120- MD-80
16- MD-90

From Delta.com

[nwafan20]

Why is AA worried about it? Why not take a look at Northwest and say to yourselves "Well, we could run our MD's for another 10-20 years!"

On a funny note, when I tried to go to airfleets.net (but accidentally typed in airfleets.com), it came up with a page with a whole bunch of ads, the second one was "Buy an airline" :D

[Ari707]

HICAGO (Reuters) -- American Airlines, a unit of AMR Corp., Wednesday said it accelerated its fleet renewal plan by beginning the replacement process for a portion of its MD-80 fleet.

American, the world's largest airline, said it notified Boeing Co. (down $1.13 to $89.39, Charts) of its intention to begin pulling forward the delivery of 47 Boeing 737-800 aircraft under an existing purchase commitment made in 1996.

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The carrier has said it is a priority to begin phasing out its fuel-inefficient Boeing MD-80 airplanes.

American has 672 planes in its fleet, of which 300 are the narrow-bodied, twin-engined MD-80s, according to the airline's Web site. American's average fleet age is 13.9 years. The average age of the carrier's MD-80s is 17.2 years.

The airline said it told Boeing that American will take delivery in early 2009 of three of the 737 aircraft previously scheduled for delivery in 2016.

American said it intends to continue pulling forward deliveries of the other aircraft from their current 2013-2016 delivery schedules into the 2009-2012 timeframe. The 737-800 has a list price of about $70 million.