United retired its last three B737-500s by end of May ch-aviation PRO exclusive

Boeing (BOE, Chicago O'Hare) has said it will not issue any further guidance to operators of B737 MAX aircraft despite mass groundings of the type over the past two days.

Both regulators and operators of the B737-8 and 9 have grounded their respective fleets given the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines B737 MAX 8, ET-AVJ (msn 62450), on Sunday, March 10, which killed all 158 passengers and crew onboard. The incident came just over four months after the crash of a Lion Air B737 MAX 8 which killed 189 onboard. Both accidents occurred shortly after take-off.

As of 1900Z on Wednesday, March 13, multiple countries have grounded all B737 MAX operations until further notice and/or banned the type from accessing their respective airspaces.

These include:

• The European Union including the United Kingdom, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland (as per an EASA Airworthiness Directive effective 1900Z, March 12);
• China;
• Australia;
• Malaysia;
• Kuwait;
• Oman;
• The United Arab Emirates (UAE);
• Hong Kong;
• Equatorial Guinea;
• Kazakhstan;
...

The CEOs of Delta Air Lines (DL, Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson) and United Airlines (UA, Chicago O'Hare) both said they were interested in the proposed Boeing "New Mid-Market Airplane" (NMA) as a replacement for their B757 and B767 jets, Flightglobal has reported.

"Boeing hasn't decided if it's going to launch that aircraft - we hope they will," Delta CEO Ed Bastian said during the J.P. Morgan Aviation, Transportation & Industrials Conference.

The American carrier currently has 111 B757-200s (inlcuding eleven in its VIP charters division), sixteen B757-300s, two B767-300s, fifty-six B767-300(ER)s, and twenty-one B767-400(ER)s. The NMA could potentially replace all of these types. Delta's B757-200s are 22.4 years old on average, its -300s - 16.1 years old, 767-300(ER)s - 22.8 years, and -400(ER)s - 18.2 years.

Delta is planning to invest heavily in its fleet over the coming years with some USD4 billion earmarked for this purpose in 2019 alone.

For its part, United will be looking to replace its fifty-five B757-200s, twenty-one -300s, thirty-eight B767-300(ER)s, and sixteen...

Lufthansa Group has petitioned the US Department of Transportation (DOT) not to proceed with plans to curtail European Union-based carriers' wet-lease operations in the transatlantic market.

On February 21, the DOT issued a Show Cause warning the bloc that given endless delays in the ratification of a Wet-Lease agreement between the US and EU, the US was preparing to limit the duration of wet-lease statements of authorization granted to EU-based carriers to a maximum of 14 months. In addition, those whose authorizations had been running for more than 14 months would be terminated effective March 30, 2019.

The DOT argued that the move would level a playing field that had been unfairly biased against US operators that have been denied wet-lease opportunities in the EU due to EU regulation 1008/2008. Passed in 2008, the regulation only allows non-EU carriers to wet-lease to EU carriers for an initial duration of seven months, with the opportunity for one extension for another seven-month period (i.e. a maximum total of 14 months). In 2012, the US and the EU set out...