Leisure airline Condor Flugdienst is to retire its fleet of Boeing 757 after Summer 2025. The information was initially reported by German aviation website aero.de this Thursday (11). It cites the airline’s 2021/2022 annual report, dated from January 2023 but only recently made public in Germany’s Bundesanzeiger (Federal Gazette).
“Given the age of the Boeing 757 fleet, Condor is currently planning to retire it before originally planned in the leasing period”, says the report, originally in German, publicly available and reviewed by Aviacionline.
“According to the current planning, the remaining B757 will no longer be operated after Summer 2025. From Summer 2023 [already passed, ed.], only a reduced number of B757 will be operated, two of which will be utilized as technical reserves”.
Condor is one of the remaining operators of the type in Europe. According to data by Cirium’s Fleets Analyzer, the airline has nine active Boeing 757 of the stretched -300 variant, with another two of the type stored: all are leased from Seattle-based Altavair. Besides the German carrier, in Europe the -300 is only flown by Skyline Express Airline of Ukraine, with two units currently deployed on charter flights from Poland to leisure destinations, and Icelandair, with another two.
Condor expects to accelerate the phase-out of its remaining 757-300 by replacing them with the new aircraft of the Airbus A320neo family it expects to incorporate in the coming years. (In the late stages of 2023, it signed another agreement with a lessor for four A321neo and two A320neo).
Because of these plans, in its 2021/2022 report the airline reported unscheduled depreciation expenses of EUR45 million, “as the leased Boeing 757-300 aircraft will be retired significantly before their respective leasing contracts ended”.
757-200s, the more popular variant of the aircraft, still are in use across Europe with Icelandair (13 units) and Jet2 (seven). Private operator JetMagic also has an unit, with an executive-configured 757-200.
The largest operators of the 757 type remain by far Delta Air Lines, with 106 757-200 and 16 757-300 in service, according to Cirium, and United Airlines, with 39 757-200 and 21 757-300.
