Aircraft Leasing Pioneer Udvar-Hazy Announces Retirement

Aviation legend Steven Udvar-Hazy plans to retire as Executive Chairman of Air Lease Corporation on May 2.

Udvar-Hazy’s career spans roughly 60 years, and as a co-founder of International Lease Finance Corporation (ILFC) he ushered in the global aircraft leasing industry that continues to thrive. The leasing pioneer turns 80 next year.

ILFC’s parent company American International Group (AIG) got ensnared in the 2008 financial crisis, and Udvar-Hazy retired from the lessor in 2010. Subsequently, he founded Air Lease Corporation with his long-time business partner John Plueger.

“Steve’s biggest achievement is actually founding the aircraft leasing industry in 1973,” Plueger told Aviation Week in 2023.

How did he become so successful? It was his seemingly endless “passion for aviation and truly encyclopedic knowledge of aircraft and airlines,” Plueger said. “He knows city-pairs, he knows distances, and he can equate them to aircraft types.”

Over the years, Udvar-Hazy became and remains one of the most influential figures in the industry, working with Boeing and Airbus on details of aircraft designs and actually changing them; a businessman who set up two large leasing companies and has helped create or rescue scores of airlines.

Air Lease became the first major lessor to place an order for the Airbus A220 in 2019 and was the launch customer for the A330-900neo widebody jet.

More recently, Udvar-Hazy has expressed frustration with both Airbus and Boeing regarding manufacturing upheaval. “Since 2017, we have not received a single Airbus single-aisle aircraft—A320, A321, A220—on the contracted month of delivery,” he said in a speech during the APG World Connect in Malta earlier this year. “In the last seven years, we have not received a single Airbus plane [on time]—and that’s about 250 deliveries—every one of them was late.”

And although he sees the Boeing 737 MAX as “an excellent airplane,” Udvar-Hazy believes Boeing missed an opportunity to develop a new aircraft family to sit between the A321neo and 787 in today’s variants. “Between 220 to 280 seats, there’s a gap,” he said. “This is what Boeing was working on 15 years ago,” he concluded in Malta.

Instead, the A321neo is now outselling the 737-10 by “seven or eight to one.” And the 737-10 is running “four and a half years behind the A321neo, with no defined certification schedule in sight from FAA,” he said.

Whenever Udvar-Hazy offers his opinion, the industry pays attention. His passion for the aviation industry has been robust since a young age. He arrived in New York when he was 12 years old and discovered a subway line to Queens that was a short walk to LaGuardia Airport. “There was no security. I would talk my way into hangars,” Udvar-Hazy recounted to Aviation Week in 2023. “A couple of times, I got up into the control tower. I told them I was doing a school paper on air traffic control, so they invited me up.” He saw the Super Constellations, Convair 440s, DC- 6s and DC-3s—Boston-based Northeast Airlines still operated them into LaGuardia. “It was fascinating, and I loved it,” he said.

Udvar-Hazy later included Idlewild, now John F. Kennedy International Airport, into his excursions, where he saw international airline aircraft too, including those of Lufthansa, Alitalia and many others. “Of course, I had the yearning to fly as a pilot, but mainly I was interested in the business side and what the planes were doing and how they were being operated.”

Udvar-Hazy will continue to serve of on Air Lease’s Board of Directors as non-executive chairman until the company’s 2026 annual meeting.

Air Lease highlights that under Udvar-Hazy’s leadership, the company has built up an asset portfolio worth $32 billion with returns to shareholders of more than $750 million since it became publicly traded in 2011.