Warlord

Aircastle: Current Share Price Hard to Swallow

Four major debt notes, the earliest is due in 2013. So Jimmy46, the answers:

How much debt is due this year...? Zero. Interest/installment payments only.

Will they have problems rolling their debt over? No. There is none to roll over until 2013 at the earliest.

No clue about SFL, but AYR is indeed a healthy company. The current price reflects a lot of market paranoia, and there's also a built-in weakness in Europe that might be considered for most of the leasing companies.

Cheers,

Warlord

Aircastle Looks Good, Though Markets Demur

"10 years old" is ancient for a car, but is very young for an aircraft. Newer modern engines burn up to 50% less fuel, and most of AYRs fleet carry such engines.

Airlines found it cheaper to lease a newer generation aircraft than keep flying 30+ year old MD82s. Anticipating future fuel costs by locking in long-term leases for aircraft right now is a prudent thing for any airline to do. Many are finding they simply cannot buy the aircraft on the open market, so they lease (re: Boeing strike and 10 year backlog).