Crush a four-year-old plane. Sell the engines. Call it economics.
That is the Airbus A320neo story. ,One rolled off the Mobile, Alabama, line in July 2022, painted bright yellow for Spirit Airlines., ,This May, less than four years later, an excavator tore through its fuselage outside Phoenix., It was built to last decades. It lasted less than a Netflix subscription cycle of your ex.
The culprit is engines. ,Pratt & Whitney GTF engines are suffering a production shortage., ,In 2023, the company notified customers of a powder-metal defect that could cause cracking., So the engine is scarce. The plane around it is not. Guess which one gets thrown away.
The numbers are rude. ,About 100 Airbus A320neo Family aircraft and five Boeing 737 MAX jets have been dismantled or committed to disassembly, according to Engine Lease Finance Corporation., ,Planes historically hit the teardown stage after around two decades., These are being hit around kindergarten.
Spirit Airlines deserves a plaque. ,It ceased operations in May 2026., ,Buyers like EirTrade Aviation and Killick Aerospace then bought individual A320neos., Spirit spent years selling you a seat for 49 dollars plus a fee to exhale. Now its fleet is organ donation with a scrap bill.
EirTrade's Bill Thompson put it plainly. ,It was the first time in his career he'd bought an aircraft less than five years from manufacture., Thirty-year veteran of the field. First time. Mark the date.
Here is the part retail traders will miss. A part is worth more than the whole. ,Spare engines reportedly rent for up to 200,000 dollars a month each., That is a better yield than your covered-call strategy, your Discord group's "can't miss" biotech, and your marriage.
Somewhere a guy with a Robinhood account is still asking whether to buy the dip on airline stocks. The industry is melting down its own planes for scrap steel and spare gearboxes. Buy the dip. Pick the A320neo up in pieces, like your portfolio.
Photo by Josue Isai Ramos Figueroa on Unsplash
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