For example, when the aircraft is wet-leased to establish new services, then as the airline's flight or cabin crews become trained, they can be switched to a dry lease.
Operating leases of jet airliner accounted for less than 2% of the fleet in 1976, then 15% in the early 1990s, 25% in 2000 and 40% in 2017, with lessors involved in 62% of second hand mid-life aircraft transactions since 2000: 42% in Europe and 29% in North America.
[2] Having an aggressive growth mandate, more aggressive, smaller entrants have overpaid for many of their assets in the sale and leaseback market and are then undercharged on lease rates in order to win the business, with lower maintenance reserves and return conditions: lease-rate factors have fallen to 0.6% per month (7.2% per year), even reaching 0.55% (6.6% per year).
[5] In a few cases, Chinese lessors forgot they had to get secondary leases and missed the redelivery timing, stranding aircraft for a few months.
A wet lease is typically utilized during peak traffic seasons or annual heavy maintenance checks, or to initiate new routes.
Hence Egyptian flights from Cairo to Tel Aviv were operated by Air Sinai, which wet-leased from EgyptAir to circumvent the political issue.
A typical dry lease lasts upwards of two years and bears certain conditions with respect to depreciation, maintenance, insurances, etc., depending also on the geographical location, political circumstances, etc.
A dry lease saves the major airline the expense of training personnel to fly and maintain the aircraft, along with other considerations (such as staggered union contracts, regional airport staffing, etc.).
[17] Lessors have a preference for narrowbodies over widebodies due to more remarketing opportunities and the substantial reconfiguration time and cost a larger aircraft requires.