During the pandemic, American Airlines retired almost half of the long haul-capable planes in its fleet. They were conserving cash, avoiding maintenance costs, and making a bet that travel would not recover for a long time. Other airlines retired planes, like Delta did with its small orphan fleet of Boeing 777-200s. But the smart move was Scott Kirby’s at United to take a wait-and-see approach. In April 2020 things looked dark but we just didn’t know what a year and two years into the future would look like. United kept its options open and didn’t retire fleets of planes. American Airlines had 24 Airbus A330s. 15 Airbus A330-200s, initially placed in temporary storage, then permanently retired in the third quarter of 2020. 9 Airbus A330-300s, where the retirement decision was made in April 2020. It wasn’t crazy to retire the 9 A330-300s. The 15 A330-200s were the big mistake. They were relatively young and would have been especially useful during the 2022–2024 Europe travel recovery.…