Goodbye Airbus A350: LATAM Airlines unifies its long-haul fleet

LATAM Airlines says goodbye definitively to his planes Airbus A350 and begins to unify its long-haul fleet exclusively with aircraft Boeing.

The announcement was made by the CEO of LATAM Brazil, Jerome Cadier in an internal statement from the airlineínea que ráfilter with pimenteó on various specialized industry portalsérea.

between the decisions, one of them is the restructuringón of our widebody fleet in Brazil. Thus, today we announce that at that time seven A350 aircraft leaveán to be part of the LATAM Brazil fleet and next week another four. As a result, from this month, LATAM Group's wide-body fleet will beá composed of Boeing 767, 777 and 787 Dreamliner.

These measures come at a time when the group is going through a restructuring process.ón under the Capíleakage 11 from United States, generated by the worst crisis in the history of aviationón.

Among several of the actions that the airline has takeníhow to return planes, sell them or close certain routes, the long range fleet tooéI can't seeá affected in búquest to unify it.

After the announcement, the LATAM Airlines Group passenger fleet will remainá made by 17 Boeing 767, 10 Boeing 777-300ER, 10 Boeing 787-8 and 12 Boeing B787-9.

Así the flights that until this month were operated by the Airbus A350 gradually beán operated by Boeing aircraft 787 of the group's Chilean subsidiary.

The history of the Airbus A350 was born under the TAM brand in theñO 2005 when the company signs a memorandum of understanding with Airbus with the intentionón to acquire 8 aircraft of this model and seven additional aircraft were ordered 2 añundress themés, reaching a total of 22 Airbus A350-900 aircraft.

Finally, for himñO 2010 the order of these planes they arrived at 27 aircraft, which meant that it became one of the most important operators.ás largest of this aircraft worldwide, but since the fusionóWith LAN everything changedó.

The first aircraft arrivedó to TAM the 18 from December to 2015 in TAM colors and was the first operator of this aircraftón of América, in fact he was invited by the airlineíready to participate in one of the first flights of this aircraft between Sao Paulo and Manaos which you can read hereí:

Flying on the LATAM Airbus A350

In the face of the economic crisisómica in Brazil, the first doubts of the continuation began to be seenón of the A350 in the LATAM fleet, at that moment 4 of these aircraft were leased to Qatar Airways from 2017, the same ones that returned in May 2020 in the face of the crisis generated by the current pandemic.

With the alliance and purchase of the 20% of LATAM shares by Delta 14 A350 aircraft were going to pass to the North American, but again the pandemic crisis affectedó this operationón.

To close the brief history of the A350 in LATAM and complete transition to a long-range Boeing fleet, the airínea only arrivedó to receive 13 from 27 order book aircraft and focusá in optimizing its resources by downloading the different types of aircraft that it has in its fleet, which also includeén 44 Airbus A319, 132 Airbus A320, 12 Airbus A320neo y 38 Airbus A321.