Austrian Airlines sells final three Boeing 767s for teardown in Arizona

Austrian Airlines has sold its remaining three Boeing 767-300 ER aircraft to Cobra Aviation Services, according to Aviation Week. The US company will fly the long-haul jets to Arizona and break them up there for spare parts. The purchase price for the three aircraft was not disclosed.

The aircraft are registered OE-LAE, OE-LAY and OE-LAZ. OE-LAZ is due to leave for the United States first, with its ferry flight planned for October, while the other two are expected to follow towards the end of the year. Before that, Austrian has scheduled the last commercial flight of a Boeing 767-300 ER for 1 December.

The disposal is part of a wider rebuild of the carrier's long-haul fleet. A fifth Boeing 787-9 is to arrive this year, and the Lufthansa subsidiary aims to operate seven Dreamliners by the summer of 2027. The renewal is then set to continue, with the six Boeing 777-200 ERs to be replaced by 787-9s by 2029.

The three jets mark the end of a type that served Austrian for decades. Nine Boeing 767s flew for the airline over the years, starting in 1988; they had originally been ordered by Lauda Air, which became a subsidiary of Austrian Airlines in 2004. One aircraft retired earlier, OE-LAW, left the fleet in 2021 after the coronavirus pandemic and had accumulated more than 137,000 operating hours by that point.