Thai airline Thai Airways has finally managed to sell five of its classic Airbus A340s, after many years of offering them at increasingly lower prices. The company, which once had ten jets of the model in its fleet, retired them between 2012 and 2015 and only one had been sold to its country’s Air Force (in 2016), for which it flies as a VIP aircraft.
Since then, the other nine were parked at airports around the country, until a market movement helped the company sell five of them.
«In the past, we were constrained by state-owned enterprise regulations, which did not give us a good opportunity to sell the retired aircraft,» Thai Airways Chief Technical Officer Cherdphan Chotikhun said. «As a result, Thai had to bear the cost of the decommissioned aircraft for years.»
However, the situation changed. In 2020, the troubled airline had to file a restructuring plan with a bankruptcy court and the state reduced its stake to just under 48%, allowing the company to «disclose all information about the aircraft» and be «open and transparent to potential buyers,» the executive said.
Thus, as the process evolved, Cherdphan told The Nation Thailand this week that the company has been successful and agreed to sell the five units. He said the sale contract is signed but he cannot yet disclose the name of the buyer, as the deal has yet to be approved by the Department of Transport. However, he advanced that the value of the deal is about €9.6 million.
As reported by our partner media Aeroin, the executive said that over the years Thai Airways has offered the aircraft through its own sales page, where detailed documents for each can be found, and has also sent emails to more than 500 potential customers.
He also stressed that sales efforts are continuing, noting that there are still four A340-600s for sale (although under negotiation) and fourteen more aircraft «on the shelf»: twelve Boeing 777s and two Airbus A380s.
