The Lease-Rate Record: The Jets Nobody Wanted in 2021 Now Cost 60–75% More

Aircraft lease rates have repriced hard since 2021 — most sharply for the old jets nobody wanted five years ago. The lessors are posting record profits too, but those two facts are less related than they look.

Ten-year-old Boeing 737-800s and Airbus A320ceos — the generation the industry was supposed to be retiring — now lease for 60–75% more than they did in 2021, according to Cirium Ascend's constant-age lease-rate series. The current-technology jets that replaced them, the A320neo and 737 MAX 8 at age six, are up 27–35% over the same period. The used metal repriced harder than the new metal, and the reason is the same one behind the 12-year backlog: when you cannot buy an aircraft, you pay whatever it costs to borrow one.

The two lessors that still filed public accounts for 2025 both reported records. That is where the story gets misread — because most of the record was not lease rates.

Why did the old jets reprice hardest?

Because the shortage is not a shortage of aircraft. It is a shortage of delivery slots — SMBC Aviation Capital reckons the manufacturers are sold out past 2031 — and a used A320ceo is the closest available substitute for a new A320neo that cannot arrive this decade.

Each manufacturer's own published order book puts the undelivered single-aisle queue at 7,467 A320-family aircraft (Airbus, to 30 June 2026) and 4,821 737s (Boeing's unfilled-orders figure, May 2026) — 12,288 jets between two product lines. An airline that needs lift in 2027 is not in that queue. It is in the second-hand market, bidding against every other airline in the same position, for a pool that has been shrinking on three fronts at once:

Retirements running at 1.3% of the fleet, with the average retiree 24.6 years old against a historical norm of 24, is the tell. Airlines are not scrapping ageing jets; they are extending them, because the replacement has a decade-long lead time. Every deferred retirement is an aircraft that never reaches the used market — which is precisely why the previous generation has repriced faster than the current one.

Storage is the other end of the same rope. SMBC Aviation Capital puts the structural floor for storage at 5–7% of the fleet — aircraft between leases, in maintenance, in transition — and narrowbodies have hit it. There is no slack left to release, with one asterisk that matters: that reading excludes the aircraft grounded by the GTF powder-metal problem. Those jets are stored, but they are not slack — they are waiting on engines, not on a lessee, and they cannot be released into the market by any amount of demand.

The availability figure deserves the same candour. SMBC concedes that lessor availability is hard to track, because re-leases and extensions are generally not made public; the ~150 count is its proxy — stored aircraft at lessors with no future event recorded in Cirium's database — not a direct census. The direction is well evidenced. The precision is not.

Is any of this corroborated outside one lessor's report?

A fair question to ask of any number, and especially of this one: the headline figure reaches us through SMBC, which sells aircraft leases for a living. So it is worth laying out the independent checkpoints, because they line up.

Three readings, three years apart, from an appraiser, a rival lessor and a wire service — a trough in the first half of 2021, +44% by late 2023, +60–75% by 2026. The trajectory is consistent, and the 2021 starting point is not SMBC's invention.

The same Bloomberg reporting corroborates the scarcity independently of SMBC's proxy: in October 2023 it counted roughly a dozen midlife 737NGs and fewer than 25 A320ceos available to rent anywhere in the world. That is the pool an airline is bidding into.

One caveat we keep: the precise 60–75% is still a single reading of a proprietary index we cannot inspect. What is corroborated is the direction, the 2021 base, and the order of magnitude — not the last digit.

So why are lessor profits a bad proxy for lease rates?

This is the part the headline numbers get wrong. Both reported records for 2025 — Air Lease while still NYSE-listed, months before the takeover described below. Neither record was mostly about leasing.

Air Lease's pre-tax margin reads 45.4% for 2025 against 19.5% in 2024 — a spectacular jump that dissolves on inspection. Strip the $736.4m settlement of insurance claims on aircraft detained in Russia and the company's own adjusted pre-tax margin moves 21.0% → 23.8%. AerCap's arithmetic runs the same way. Its own reconciliation starts from $3,751m of net income, removes $1,490m of net Ukraine-conflict recoveries (about $3bn since 2023), then adds back $262m of purchase-accounting amortisation and $184m of tax effects to arrive at $2,706m adjusted. The Ukraine line is by far the largest single item, and it is what separates a 21% GAAP return on equity from a 15% adjusted one.

Both are recoveries on fleets written off after Russia's 2022 invasion — insurance litigation finally settling, years later. The money is real. It says nothing whatsoever about what an airline pays for an A321neo in 2026.

Where is the lease-rate signal in the filings, then?

In two narrower places — and both confirm the Cirium picture without the noise.

Revenue growing faster than the asset base. This is the cleanest read available from public filings, and it is our own arithmetic on the two companies' numbers:

Both measures are in dollars, not aircraft: an asset base that grows 2% by value cannot generate 5% more rent unless each dollar of aircraft is earning more — which is the definition of a rising lease yield. Air Lease says so in as many words, attributing the increase to fleet growth "and an increase in our portfolio lease yield."

Net spread. AerCap's annualised net spread — lease rents less funding cost, over average lease assets — rose to 7.8% in 2025 from 7.5%, and to 3.5% from 3.2% after depreciation. That is a modest, unglamorous number, and it is the one that actually measures the leasing business. It rose while funding cost stood still: AerCap's full-year interest expense excluding derivative mark-to-market was $1,956m in both 2025 and 2024, unchanged to the million.

Who is left to lease from?

The supply of lessors is consolidating faster than the supply of aircraft, which is the part of this story with the longest tail.

SMBC Aviation Capital counts roughly 25 lessors holding speculative orderbook positions a decade ago, heading for about ten by 2030. In 2028, on its analysis, three lessors hold 60% of the delivery slots currently being placed. Lessors take about a quarter of new deliveries today — measured on direct orders, excluding sale-and-leaseback — and SMBC sees that falling toward 15% by the end of the decade, while the OEMs are sold out past 2031. Any airline needing capacity before then has to come through a lessor channel that is simultaneously getting narrower. The sale-leaseback route stays open and competitive, which is the qualifier that keeps this from being a closed door; but SMBC notes it too is tightening, with post-delivery deals falling from 30–40% of sale-leasebacks to 15% in 2025.

That thesis acquired an unusually literal proof point on 8 April 2026, when Sumitomo Corporation, SMBC Aviation Capital, Apollo-managed funds and Brookfield completed their acquisition of Air Lease — $7.4bn in equity, about $28.2bn including assumed debt — and renamed it Sumisho Air Lease Corporation. The transaction lifted SMBC Aviation Capital's orderbook to roughly 420 aircraft and its owned, serviced and committed fleet past 1,700.

A disclosure the reader should weigh: much of the market data above is published by SMBC Aviation Capital, a lessor, whose commercial interest points toward the conclusion that lease rates are strong and consolidation is healthy — and which has just removed one of its own competitors. The underlying appraisals are Cirium's rather than SMBC's, and the filing-based figures come from AerCap and Air Lease directly, but the framing is an interested party's. We have used the numbers and not the framing.

What would actually break the rates?

Deliveries — and only deliveries. SMBC expects both OEMs to lift output 12–15% in 2026, exceeding 1,500 aircraft, with CFM targeting a 15% increase in LEAP engine deliveries. That is the pressure valve.

The reasons to doubt it arrive on schedule. An RBC supplier survey cited by SMBC has Boeing building 55 737s a month in 2028 against Boeing's own 63/month goal — suppliers, who have to actually make the parts, are planning for less than the OEM is promising. Meanwhile escalation is now pushing the other way: aircraft purchase prices are indexed largely to manufacturing wages, US Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows a sharp 2025 rise in aircraft-manufacturing pay, and lease contracts carry mechanisms that pass escalation through to the rent. Cheaper money helps the lessors' side of the ledger — investment-grade lessor bond spreads have compressed from 182bps to about 90bps over treasuries, with 2026 coupons near 4.5% against just under 6% in 2023 — but funding costs set the floor under rates, not the ceiling over them.

Why it matters

Lease rates are where the backlog stops being an abstraction and starts appearing on an airline's P&L. An order queue stretching past 2031 does not merely delay fleet plans; it transfers pricing power to whoever already owns flyable metal, and it does so most violently in the used market that airlines are forced into. The 60–75% repricing of a decade-old narrowbody is the backlog's clearest financial signature — and, unlike the lessors' headline profits, it is not an insurance settlement in disguise.

Sources & methodology

Undelivered order counts. A320 family backlog of 7,467 is verified against Airbus's own official orders-and-deliveries spreadsheet to 30 June 2026 (single-aisle orders less A220: 20,210 placed against 12,743 delivered). The 737 backlog of 4,821 is Boeing's own "unfilled orders" figure from its public orders-and-deliveries database, as of our May 2026 snapshot; the live figure moves with new orders and stood higher when last checked, so treat the 12,288 total as a dated reading rather than a running one. Note separately that Boeing's public delivery database and the delivery tables in its Forms 10-K disagree by one to two aircraft in several pre-2023 years — a discrepancy we document in the supply-chain bill. It does not touch the backlog figures used here, which come from a different field. See Orders & Deliveries and The 12-Year Wait.

Lessor financials. AerCap Holdings N.V., "AerCap Holdings N.V. Reports Record Financial Results for the Full Year 2025," 6 February 2026 (earnings release) — total revenues and other income $8,517m vs $7,997m; net income attributable to AerCap Holdings N.V. $3,750.6m vs $2,098.6m, or $21.30 per share. The full adjusted-net-income reconciliation runs: net income $3,751m, less net recoveries related to the Ukraine Conflict $(1,490)m, plus amortisation of maintenance rights and lease premium assets recognised under purchase accounting $262m, plus the income tax effect of those adjustments $184m, giving adjusted net income of $2,706m / $15.37 per share; return on equity 21% GAAP and 15% adjusted. Insurance and other recoveries related to the Ukraine Conflict were approximately $1.5bn in 2025, taking total recoveries since 2023 to approximately $3bn. Also: basic lease rents $6,679m vs $6,377m; average lease assets $61,907m vs $60,845m; interest expense excluding mark-to-market of interest rate derivatives $1,956m in both years; annualised net spread 7.8% vs 7.5%, and 3.5% vs 3.2% after depreciation.

Air Lease Corporation, "Air Lease Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2025 Results," 12 February 2026, filed as Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K, SEC CIK 1487712 (SEC filing) — revenues $3,015.7m vs $2,733.7m; recoveries of Russian fleet write-off $736.4m; income before taxes $1,369.7m vs $533.3m; net income attributable to common stockholders $1,044.1m vs $372.1m; adjusted net income before income taxes $718.4m vs $574.2m; pre-tax margin 45.4% vs 19.5%, adjusted 23.8% vs 21.0%; rental of flight equipment +8%; fleet net book value $29.1bn vs $28.2bn; 490 owned aircraft.

Market data. Shane Matthews, Darren Naughton and David Griffin, Push and Pull Factors on Aircraft Lease Rates 2026, SMBC Aviation Capital Strategic and Market Analysis, March 2026 (PDF). Constant-age lease-rate movements are attributed by SMBC to Cirium Ascend, on a constant-age basis versus 2021, for 737-800s and A320ceos at age 10 (+60–75%) and A320neos and 737 MAX 8s at age 6 (+27–35%); the accompanying chart (Figure 9) is sourced to Cirium. Availability, storage, retirement and lessor-slot figures are sourced to Cirium Fleets Analyzer with SMBC analysis.

Independent corroboration. Because the headline figure reaches us through an interested party, we sought outside checkpoints and publish them in the body. Julie Johnsson, "Used jets rents surge 44% as airlines pay up to buoy fleets," Bloomberg, 19 October 2023 (syndicated copy) — ten-year-old 737-800 lease rates 44% above January 2022 levels and above pre-pandemic; single-aisle rates up 30–40% year on year; roughly a dozen midlife 737NGs and fewer than 25 A320ceos available to rent globally; attributed to Cirium Ascend (Rob Morris, global head of consultancy) and Ishka, with Air Lease's Steven Udvar-Hazy also quoted. Andy Cronin, CEO of Avolon, reported by Ishka, 7 October 2022 (article) — narrowbody lease rates up 15–20% from a trough in the first half of 2021, with A320neos at par and 737 MAXs above pre-Covid rates. These corroborate the 2021 base, the direction and the order of magnitude; they do not independently verify the precise 60–75%, which remains a single reading of a proprietary Cirium index we cannot inspect.

Three limitations in that source are carried into the body rather than left in the footnotes, because each one qualifies a headline number: the ~150 availability count is SMBC's proxy (stored lessor aircraft with no future event recorded in Cirium), not a census, and SMBC states plainly that lessor availability is hard to track because re-leases and extensions are not generally public; the narrowbody storage-floor reading excludes aircraft grounded by the GTF powder-metal issue, as does Figure 8; and the "quarter of new deliveries" lessor share is measured on direct orders, excluding sale-and-leaseback. Note also the interest disclosed in the body: SMBC Aviation Capital is a lessor and a party to the Air Lease transaction.

Transaction. SMBC Aviation Capital, "Sumitomo Corporation, SMBC Aviation Capital, Apollo and Brookfield Complete the Acquisition of Air Lease Corporation," 8 April 2026 (release) — ~$7.4bn equity, ~$28.2bn including debt; renamed Sumisho Air Lease Corporation; orderbook to ~420 aircraft; owned, serviced and committed fleet over 1,700.

Our own calculations. The asset-base-vs-lease-revenue gap table is our arithmetic on the reported figures above; no adjustment has been applied beyond the companies' own stated numbers. Percentages are as reported by each company, which round independently.

A note on definitions. Air Lease's headline net income of $1,044.1m is attributable to common stockholders. The company's consolidated statement of income reports net income of $1,088.4m before $44.3m of preferred stock dividends. Our Operator Watch page carries the latter figure, which is what the company tags `NetIncomeLoss` in its XBRL. Both are correct; they answer different questions, and the $44.3m gap is ordinary preferred dividends — not the non-cash deemed dividend on the Series A redemption, which was nil in 2025. This definitional split is logged on our corrections and data notes page. Lease rates in this piece are current market lease rates for net dry operating leases.

What we did not publish. We have no verified current lease-rate factor (LRF) for the A320neo or 737 MAX, and no independently verified absolute dollar lease rate for 2026. Widely circulated "$400,000 a month" figures trace to secondary aviation press rather than to an appraiser publication we could check, so they are omitted. The percentage movements above are constant-age index changes, not price quotes.