Name: 787s For Sale, A321XLR Delays & United Aircraft Retired
Uploaded: 2025-04-29T17:10:24.000Z
Duration: 8 min 53 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Basic passive voice

Welcome back to your latest industry recap, the A321XLR is delayed and an airline united are retiring aircraft and a sale of 787s has been postponed.

Adverbs of manner

China Southern Airlines has reportedly suspended existing plans to sell its fleet of Boeing 787-8s.

As you know, trade tensions between China and the United States escalate.

As tensions between these two rise with each passing day, airlines are now being forced to reassess previous decisions that were made, including the possible retirement or sale of jets.

The risk of the current trade tensions is the ability of China Southern, the broader country also, to take on new planes following China's confirmation that it would reject any new commercial airplane delivery from Boeing.

As a result, while the 787s were initially placed for sale, they are now expected to stay, as concerns emerge over China Southern and other companies' chances to acquire new planes over the coming months to meet capacity, they're expecting a pretty tough winter period if you will.

China Southern's move is just one of the many that's unfolding currently, it has really seen the prioritization of older aircraft or planes that were meant to be axed to take on new generation planes that would move ahead with fleet renewal efforts but are now not taking place.

While ultimately each set of circumstances is different, the forced readjustment of airlines' fleet's balance remains a relevant topic of conversation, as is obvious from this trade war in comparison to say a global pandemic.

China Southern only two weeks ago reaffirmed its intention to sell the fleet of 787-8s, that really shows you just how quickly things can move.

Driven by reporting, the 10 787-8s were listed for sale alongside two engines, despite the engines being put up for sale, no buyer had emerged, but the 787s would have provided an immediate capacity increase to any airline that looked to pick them up.

The very China and United States trade war that I speak of has escalated tenfold in recent months and now Boeing is being brought into focus with fresh impacts.

Like I said, China has informed all its airlines to stop taking delivery of new commercial airplanes.

It really has been a long-standing trade war that has seen tensions rise on several occasions and then drop back off, you'd argue now it is only increasing tenfold, and the retaliation act will prevent the production of any new plane produced by Boeing that is destined for a Chinese operator, putting their output rates in limbo and seeing a lot of work now need to be conducted on a contractual sense to move through these obstacles.

Over to the next story and United Airlines confirmed the retirement of 21 aircraft earlier than previously planned in a recent quarterly report.

The tough decision to retire aircraft earlier than expected is considered a last resort to try and manage several operational challenges.

The confirmation will also result in substantial savings of around $100 million this year alone that's USD as tactics are initiated to ensure engine overhauls aren't required for these outgoing planes.

United says that despite these early retirements of aircraft, its results could be very different looking ahead due to factors that remain outside of its control.

Studying economic conditions and acquiring new planes will determine how the business performs in the upcoming months and also years.

However if there is one thing that is similar with these two aforementioned reasons, it is how largely they remain out of their control, whether it is political tensions that they don't really have a say in or the delivery of new commercial aircraft, that is strictly down to the plane maker that they are ordering the aircraft from and whether they can get their business together.

Compounded by the mandatory groundings of aircraft, driven by engine reliability concerns and like I said plane makers inability to deliver on time, United says the integration may be more challenging than ever before.

Moreover with tensions towards the United States, the country United Airlines calls home increasing, well there's also very much a concern of how its performance will air across ever so specific markets as forward bookings show signs of drops in certain locations.

This is not isolated to United Airlines, Virgin Atlantic has also seen something similar and has also been cooling off of demand from Australia.

Internally, United Airlines has already confirmed the axing of services across its domestic network as soon as July 2025 due to what it describes as softer demand.

The domestic capacity cut aligns with United's very public commentary surrounding those ongoing political tensions, uncertainty and more which have largely led to customers not booking flights as often as they would with maybe your customer confidence not being at the levels required.

United therefore needs to adjust its network accordingly as the retirement of planes has impacted it.

Still the reduced capacity would definitely be deemed necessary to ensure that further losses are not incurred.

Before fresh political tensions dropping customer confidence in flying and a smaller appetite from some to actually head towards the United States, the airline was already expecting growth to be slower.

That is because aircraft such as the 737 MAX continue to pose problems for United Airlines ranging from the lower output at the American plane maker that is less than ideal.

It results in Boeing being unable to get its jets off on time and fleet renewal being a concern for the customer in waiting.

However, another visible issue has been Boeing's ability also to certify planes within the MAX program.

While there are some variants that have been present in our industry for actually quite some time, with United a customer of jets such as the 737-10, this is a plane that is still not approved.

So across 2024, the airline consistently revised its growth forecasting with the realization being made internally that the next few years will probably require a lot more patience.

And that was before all of these political tensions emerged as well.

And over to the final story where Wizz Air has once again confirmed its launch with the next generation of the Airbus A321XLR has been delayed with confirmation provided to CH Aviation indicating that this is the second delay in the span of a month for the game changing plane.

Described as unforeseen issues during the delivery process, a revised timeline has not been provided at the time of recording to Wizz Air, a blow to the operator.

The debut of the XLR is seen as hugely important for the airline's long-term future and to enable considerable fleet growth.

However, because the XLR has been delayed, Wizz Air has been forced to deploy its A321LR on routes that the XLR was meant to already be flying on, certainly seen as a short-term solution to that broader inability to get the plane it desires.

As part of this challenge, while routes such as London Gatwick to Jeddah can commence, they are not being operated at their full capabilities, which were intended when the airline first announced service.

To make the non-stop route possible, the A321LR is being forced to carry a limited number of passengers between the cities, which is far from ideal and would not have been required if the A321XLR had obviously been delivered on time.

Wizz Air's first launch delay, you may recall, came in late March 2025, when they said that a debut for the 31st of March would not be possible.

The fresh comments at that point suggested that a revised timeframe for delivery would take place on the 10th of April, this date ultimately falling through.

The A321XLR is going to be very important for Wizz Air, as I've already touched on.

This is a plane that was introduced into a market where Boeing was not necessarily responding to some levels of demand.

That range that I speak of in the XLR has become a key selling point for companies like Wizz Air, which can now fly between London Gatwick and Jeddah without a single stop.

There are opportunities for now many more cities to be within reach.

And for other operators of the aircraft, those range capabilities paired with a higher capacity allow for enhanced transatlantic flying, even throughout Asia.

In other cases, the addition of the XLR can definitely be considered as a benefit to easing pressure on wide-body planes, which had at times been carrying the brunt of an airline's international operation, well now that can change.

And while this represents the second pushback for Wizz Air, they'll remain confident that the plane will, once eventually into commercial operations for them, be a massive resounding success.

Thank you very much for your support here on the channel, it really does mean a lot.

Take care, be safe, and I'll see you tomorrow for your next industry recap.