Mexico’s Interjet Grounds Four Planes, Stoking Lessor Angst

Interjet, the Mexican airline that acknowledged financial challenges in a court filing last year, is stirring concern among lessors by grounding four of its Airbus SE planes.

The company says the jets are undergoing “major maintenance” and that two of them will be returned to lessors as it prepares to add newer planes to its fleet. Three of Interjet’s 44 Airbus A320 aircraft haven’t flown since at least October, according to data compiled by online flight trackers. One of its eight new A321neo models has been on the ground since November.

“We have an excellent relationship with our lessors, and we’re working with some of them to restructure our current leasing conditions,” the company said in an email. In a subsequent statement late Tuesday, it reiterated that the maintenance is part of routine fleet management, and two of the grounded planes will be replaced with newer jets.

“Every airline has its own maintenance schedules,” Interjet said in the statement.

Airplanes require frequent maintenance. But even the most intensive program, a so-called D check, would typically take only about a month, said Charles Horning of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. Three of the planes Interjet has grounded are 18 years old on average, while the A321neo is one and a half years old.

“A year and a half would be very early for a D check,” Horning said.

The suspension is stoking anxiety among the airline’s lessors, said people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the proceedings are private. One lessor suspects that Mexico’s third-largest carrier is using the planes for parts to keep other aircraft in operation.

Interjet said the work being done on the Airbus jets was normal and “has nothing to do” with an earlier situation in which the company grounded some aircraft made by a Russian manufacturer in order to use them for spare parts.

Aircastle Ltd and AerCap Holdings NV, the lessors that own the Airbus jets on the ground, declined to comment.

‘Technical Bankruptcy’

ABC Aerolineas SA, which operates as Interjet, is owned by the descendants of a late Mexican president, Miguel Aleman Valdes. In operation since 2005, the company has sought to carve out a niche between full-service Grupo Aeromexico SAB and budget carriers.

The grounding of some Airbus jets, and the added pressure from lessors, suggests a deepening of Interjet’s financial troubles as it seeks to reap the rewards of Mexico’s growing passenger traffic. Amid a tax dispute with the Finance Ministry last year, closely held Interjet said in a court filing that its accumulated losses over the years could be interpreted as a “technical bankruptcy.”

In Mexico, that phrase typically is used to describe a situation where liabilities outweigh assets. Interjet hasn’t filed for protection from creditors. The airline later tweeted that it wasn’t in technical bankruptcy and said the situation didn’t affect its operations.

The company stopped filing financial reports last year, saying it had repaid a loan that required the public disclosures.

Interjet’s aircraft utilization contrasts with the picture at two rivals with Airbus fleets. The planes of discount airlines Volaris and VivaAerobus spend a few days on the ground at most, according to data compiled by FlightAware, Flightradar24 and Plane Finder.

Russian Jets

The Aleman family is also involved in a legal tussle over $32 million with Grupo Televisa SAB, Mexico’s largest broadcaster. In October, Televisa said the Alemans hadn’t yet made the first payment for a group of radio stations the family had said it would buy from the broadcaster.

In 2017, the carrier kept four Sukhoi Superjet 100 jets on the ground because of supply issues with the model’s Russian maker, which doesn’t have a maintenance facility in the Americas. Interjet used the grounded planes for parts.

Problems with the Russian-made aircraft that same year gradually reduced their usefulness, leading to flight cancellations and hurting ticket sales as travelers lost confidence in the carrier, Interjet said in last year’s court filings. Out of Interjet’s original 22 Sukhoi jets, only four are still active, flight records show.

Interjet said at the time of the filing that it had to halt flights of as many as eight A320 jets because of engine maintenance delays.