AerCap: delivery rates will remain low for years

AerCap is seeing little improvement in new aircraft delivery delays and expects the imbalance between demand and supply to continue for “several years.” The latest issue with the Pratt & Whitney Geared Turbofan powder metal contamination will worsen this situation. The imbalance continues to drive demand for current aircraft, the world’s largest lessor said on July 31. AerCap: delivery rates will remain low for years.

It’s certainly not the first time AerCap is raising concerns about new-aircraft delivery rates, and it isn’t the only lessor. CEO Aengus Kelly saw the trend coming a couple of years ago and raised concerns about new-technology engine durability

in August 2022. In November and again during AerCap’sfull-year 2022 results presentation in March, Kelly noted that OEM deliveries have been some 1.800 aircraft short of what they had planned for 2019, representing an eleven percent shortage of the world’s fleet.

During today’s earnings call, he said that OEM deliveries versus annual flights are currently at around 38 percent of 2018 levels. Kelly expects this to grow to 73 percent by the end of this year, when flights should reach 89 percent of 2018 levels. That year was the last one when deliveries equaled flights. Since then, the grounding of the Boeing MAX in 2019, two years of the Covid crisis, and the supply chain and labor constraints in 2022 have made them drift apart.