The Airbus A330 is lost in the pandemic’s economic Twilight Zone

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• The A330 is Airbus’s best-selling twin-aisle aircraft and sold in incredible numbers over the last decade ahead of a generation of all-new designs.
• That has left a surplus of twin-aisle aircraft firmly in place before the pandemic hit, throwing the market into deep uncertainty as those aircraft were too cheap to sell, but too-expensive to part-out.
• Parking the surplus A330s in anticipation of better times remains the least-bad alternative for owners and lessors.

2021 is not a good time to own a wide-body passenger aircraft. Even as traffic continues its slow return, it is the long-haul, international traveler that has yet to return – and the very passenger on which the wide-body aircraft most relies.

As the remaining passenger market temporarily shifts to a short-haul, domestic form of travel, the requirement for smaller narrow-body aircraft has proven to be more buoyant than their wide-body counterparts. This trend is both intuitive and apparent in the data, as outlined by TAC Analysis in late summer, 2020.

Related: Aircraft out of storage and into the frying pan

Yet, within the widebody segment there remains a diverse fleet of aircraft experiencing varying levels of impact. The mid-sized wide-body segment spanning approximately 250 to 350 seats necessitates a closer look as it grapples with an abundance of classic aircraft and a strong order book for a new generation. Alongside the comparatively recent introductions of the Boeing 787-8 and -9, as well as the Airbus A350-900 and A330-900neo, the mid-sized segment was home to an already robust fleet of aircraft, including the 777-200ER and most notably, the A330-200 and -300.

It is the latter of these aircraft, the classic A330 and its market potential where we focus our attention for this TAC Analysis amidst a clear twin-aisle aircraft recession. How is the aircraft faring in the new mid-pandemic/pre-recovery market, and what factors are at play which could define its ultimate value to airlines and lessors?

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