Last One May Leave The Fleet In 2018

The retirement of United Airlines' Boeing 747s has never been a question, but now the carrier says it may stop flying the iconic jumbo jets two years earlier than previously planned.

Aviation blogger Brian Summers writes that in a memo to its pilots, United's senior VP for flight operations Howard Attarian said that the airline is"contemplating an accelerated retirement plan for the 747s. If we do decide to head in this direction, we plan to accelerate widebody deliveries to replace this capacity."

The airline cites operating and maintenance costs as the primary reason for considering the move. In a separate memo, the carries said the flight is aging, and many operators are beginning to retire the jets as support for them becomes more difficult.

In a transcript of a conference call reporting first quarter earnings last year by United Continental CEO Jeffery Smisek last year, the UAL executive said that the airplane is one that "we do intend to keep for a few more years we have a couple coming out of our fleet in the near future but some of these we’ve made some improvements to the operating reliability of the aircraft and we could expect to keep them for another few years.

"They have another sort of big maintenance events in the 2020 time frame that that will be another decision point for us whether we want to extend them further at that point or go ahead and retire them."

(Image from file)

FMI: www.united.com