United Airlines (UA, Chicago O'Hare) has said in its annual report that it has placed a firm order for 25 incremental B737 MAX (variant not disclosed) and accelerated to 2022, the delivery of a further 29 aircraft from a previously ordered batch.
Following the new order, placed on February 26, 2021, United Airlines now expects twenty-one B737 MAX to arrive in 2021 (of which eight have already been delivered since the beginning of the year), a further 40 in 2022, and the remaining 127 in 2023 and beyond, for a total of 210 aircraft.
Under the previous plan, as reported in United's quarterly report for the third quarter of 2020, the airline intended to take sixteen B737 MAX in the final three months of 2020 (only eight were delivered, in fact), 24 in 2021, and none in 2022. As such, under that plan, the airline would have ended 2022 with fifty-four B737 MAX. Following the revised order and delivery timeline, it is targetting 83 units by the end of next year.
According to the ch-aviation fleets module, United Airlines has so far taken delivery of thirty B737-9s. Prior to the February 26 incremental order, its backlog for the B737 MAX comprised a further thirteen B737-9s, fourteen B737-8s, and 128 B737-10s (for a total of 185 units).
The airline also partially reneged on its previous decision to add twenty second-hand A319-100s which it agreed to buy in 2018 and which would have delivered this year. So far three have been delivered with the remaining seventeen due over the course of this year and the next. However, United said it now intends to sell all of them to other customers.
United has, however, maintained its plan to purchase eleven second-hand B737-700s due to deliver this year.
