Alaska Airlines retires its final Airbus A320

 

Alaska Airlines is retiring its final Airbus A320 aircraft, with the aircraft scheduled to leave Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) at 1:00 PM local time (GMT -8) to be stored in Victorville Southern California Logistics Airport (VCV).  

The jet, registered as N849VA, will be joining 11 other A320s phased out by Alaska Airlines in January 2023. Overall, the airline retired 52 aircraft of the type between October 2019 and January 2023, excluding a final A320 still assigned to the Seattle Tacoma International Airport (SEA)-based airline, according to planespotters.net. The airline also retired 10 Airbus A319s in February and March 2020. 

As the airline looks to move on the aircraft, which previously belonged to Virginia America, only 10 Airbus A321neos remain in the carrier’s fleet. Following the merger of Alaska Airlines and Virgin America in April 2016, the former’s brand survived, absorbing the latter’s fleet and network, which included the Airbus aircraft. Prior to the merger, Alaska Airlines did not operate any jets built by the European plane maker.  

Photo: Duncan Stewart - LAX

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