CAPA Live: Air Lease Executive Chairman Steven Udvar-Házy

Talking at the CAPA Live on 12-May-2021, Air Lease Corporation’s executive chairman Steven Udvar-Házy spoke with CAPA’s chairman emeritus Peter Harbison.

The verbatim transcript follows. Some of the highlights:

“Many airlines have mortgaged everything, their planes, their slots, their airport terminals, their ground facilities, their frequent flyer programmes….I believe that a significant part of airline loans will either have to be forgiven by government agencies or converted to some kind of equity.

“There’s venture money that’s available. There’s good young used aircraft at reasonable prices, and there’s plenty of pilots and flight attendants that are looking for work. That’s a temptation to start a new airline…I think we would limit the size of our exposure to startups to maybe 5%, 6% of our total portfolio.

“The lease rates Norse have worked out on the same aircraft are significantly lower than Norwegian. If you can save USD4-500,000 a month on renting the airplane you’ve got between USD5 and USD6 million a year delta between the fixed costs of what Norwegian had to endure or what Norse has to live with.

“We have certainly reduced our MAX exposure, and Boeing needs to get their act together and get these airplanes back in service and provide the economic incentives for the airlines to stay with the programme.”