Airlines in the world are measured using multiple metrics. However, one of the simplest metrics to determine an airline's size is measuring its fleet. The carriers across the world are struggling to increase the number of plane's their fleet. The reason for this struggle is that a bigger fleet translates to covering more routes, increased frequency and simultaneously more flyers. But which of these airlines is the biggest in terms of size? We answer the question here.
The data of planespotters.net shows that American Airlines has the largest fleet of aircrafts in the world. To be precise the count of the aeroplanes stands at 913 with 13 more to be added later. It is to be noted that the number excludes the aircrafts owned by American Airlines subsidiaries.
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To add more details about the carrier, American Airlines was founded in 1930 and has close to a century of history to back it up. Since we mentioned the history, the Texas based airline started as a mail carrier and grew to be one of the biggest airlines in the world. Furthermore, as per the website of the airline they operate close to 6,700 flights every day covering 350 destinations in 50 countries.
The American Airlines fleet's major portion consists of narrowbody aircraft with 800 planes in the fleet. Now this type can be further bifurcated to Airbus and Boeing aircrafts with 455 of them manufactured by the former and 345 by the latter.
The Boeing 737-800 is the most widely used aeroplane in the world's largest fleet. In total, American Airlines operates 345 Boeing 737 aircraft, of which 303 are the -800 model and 42 are the more recent, more productive 737 MAX 8. The MAX 8 models have an average age of 3.3 years compared to the -800 models' 12.6 years on average.
American Airlines is an Airbus customer and flies 455 Airbus A320s. The 455 Airbus aircraft are divided into 133 A319-100 (commonly referred to as the Baby Bus), 48 A320-200, 218 A321-200, and 56 A321neo by American.
American Airlines operates a widebody fleet of all Boeing aircraft, divided between the newer Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the larger 777. The airline has 67 Boeing 777 aircraft, 47 -200 variant, and 20 of the -300ER variant. The remaining 46 aircraft in its widebody fleet are divided between 24 787-8 and 22 787-9. In total, American has 113 widebody aircraft in its fleet.
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