Southeast Asia a focus of concern: Aircastle

The sluggish recovery of the aviation market in the Southeast Asian region and the knock-on impact on carriers’ ability to pay their rents remains an area of concern for Aircastle, CE Michael Ingelese says, emphasising that some airlines are “struggling pretty significantly”. Speaking on 21 April, Inglese focused on Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore as countries where “there is not the level of activity that anybody was hoping to see when we got to this point as we were looking forward as recently as six or four months ago”. Regionally, Southeast Asia is place “where things are progressing a lot slower than everyone would like”, he adds. Cirium fleets data shows that Aircastle leases aircraft to carriers including AirAsia, AirAsia X Thai Smile and Garuda Indonesia. Ingelese says that AirCastle is continuing to work through “issues” with rental collections in Latin America and highlighted Azul, Avianca, Aeromexico and LATAM. But he also notes that in both those regions the lessor has other customers that have continued to pay their rents or have smaller deferrals.<br/>