American Airlines’ Airbus A330s that were (prematurely, in my opinion) retired at the start of the coronavirus pandemic will be returning to the skies… but for a different airline!
In this post:
Sun PhuQuoc Airways picks up eight Airbus A330s
Sun PhuQuoc Airways is a leisure airline startup based in Vietnam. The airline received its air operator’s certificate in September 2025, and commenced commercial operations as of November 2025.
The carrier’s primary hub is in Phu Quoc (PQC), as you may have guessed based on the name. So far the company has a fleet of 10 Airbus A320-family aircraft, including two A320neos, two A321s, and six A321neos. The airline has huge growth aspirations beyond that, including acquiring eight Airbus A330-200s, plus 20 Boeing 787-9s.
We’re now learning more details about how these wide body plans are taking shape. It appears that PhuQuoc Airways is acquiring eight A330s that used to fly for American.
The planes are expected to be delivered to the airline between June 2026 and March 2027. They’re still quite new, as they’re only 12-13 years old, and they’ve spent roughly half of that time in storage.
These are all planes that were initially delivered to US Airways, and they have 247 seats, including 20 business class seats, 21 premium economy seats, and 206 economy seats. The business class seats are in a reverse herringbone configuration.
It remains to be seen how many changes the airline actually makes to these planes. Vietnamese airlines are known for acquiring planes secondhand, and making minimal updates. 😉
It’s going to be fascinating to see what long haul routes the airline has planned with these aircraft. While Vietnam’s economy has been growing fast, the country’s aviation sector has seen mixed results. For example, several years back we saw Bamboo Airways growing at a very fast pace, only to then have to dump most of its aircraft, because the economics just didn’t make sense.
I’m determined to fly on one of these PhuQuoc Airways A330s once they enter service, as this’ll be such a blast from the past for American (hopefully the Park Hyatt Phu Quoc is open by then!).
These A330s were a major strategic blunder for American
It can’t be overstated how much of a strategic blunder it was for American to retire these planes so early, and as I see it, this was part of when American really firmly cemented its third place position among the “big three” carriers.
At the start of the pandemic, American retired all of its A330s, along with all Boeing 757s and 767s, and that massively limited American’s long haul growth opportunities. While that maybe seemed wise for some number of weeks when many people felt travel demand would never recover, demand sure came back fast and strong.
So when that happened, American found itself at a major disadvantage, given its small long haul fleet. What’s sad is that at a minimum, American could’ve initially reactivated these A330s. They were just six or seven years old at the time, and had plenty of life left in them, not to mention American had just reconfigured them to add premium economy.
But nope, American didn’t do that. Instead, it just pursued its “buy lots of new planes, bulk up on debt, and dominate the world via El Paso” strategy, which hasn’t exactly been a smashing success.
Bottom line
American’s gently used Airbus A330-200s will be returning to the skies, flying for Vietnam leisure airline startup Sun PhuQuoc Airways. The airline launched operations in recent months, and has massive growth plans, including acquiring eight ex-American A330s, along with quite a few Boeing 787-9s.
We’ll see how this all plays out, though I’m happy to see these planes getting another lease on life, given that they were only in service for such a short period. It’s just a shame American isn’t the airline that decided to bring them back.
What do you make of this deal involving ex-American A330s?
No doubt this AA decision to retire the A330's made no sense.
It made sense at the time. Nobody thought the vaccine would get made and distributed as far and as quickly as it did, and that travel would rebound as quickly as it did.
Scott Kirby and United Airlines were the outlier who got grief for keeping what was thought at the time to be too many planes on the books.
People charged with making these billion dollar decisions don't do things nonsensically. You just didn't understand it.
What was the “El Paso strategy”?
It was to serve many small cities at the expense of a few large ones.
“Let DL and UA have JFK and SFO,” said American. “We’ll dominate in ‘up and coming’ markets!”
Turns out up and coming markets aren’t profitable because the big money flies JFK/SFO, like, exclusively. Equity partners at top law firms don’t take clients in El Paso!
Weren't they supposed to go to Thai, or am I missing something?
Perhaps you're thinking of the 787s from China Southern