Do airline companies captilalise the asset of an airplane when they buy the plane even if they do not expect it to be delivered for 3-5 years
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It will depend on the contract for purchase.
The point at which title transfers to the airline (and 'risks & rewards of ownership') would be a key factor.
However, the purchase of a new aircraft would likely involve a deposit being paid and stage payments as the aircraft is being built. In this case the payments would be capitalised as 'assets under construction' (or some similar name) but not depreciated until the aircraft goes into service.
Many aircraft are actually financed under finance leases (GE Capital being a major player in this field). In this case the aircraft is likely to be capitalised upon delivery, at which time the liability under the lease would be recorded as a creditor - but again it will depend on the way that the lease agreement is structured.
Have a look at the relevant airline company's accounts and see what their accounting policies say?
Probably in a similar way to the 2018 accounts, payments actually made (which I presume is stage invoices) appear to be denoted within the fixed asset note as "progress payments" and capital commitments are disclosed (no double entry for this one) as a note ,such as this in 2018 re IAG, notes 12 and 13 (pages 141-142)
"13 Capital expenditure commitments
Capital expenditure authorised and contracted for but not provided for in the accounts amounts to €10,831 million (December 31,2017: €12,137 million). The majority of capital expenditure commitments are denominated in US dollars, and as such are subject to
changes in exchange rates.The outstanding commitments include €10,716 million for the acquisition of 71 Airbus A320s (from 2019 to 2022), 21 Airbus A321s
(from 2019 to 2020), 4 Airbus A330s (in 2019), 41 Airbus A350s (from 2019 to 2022), 4 Boeing 777-300s (in 2020) and 12 Boeing787s (from 2020 to 2023)."
You need to read the last accounts.
https://www.iairgroup.com/~/media/Files/I/IAG/documents/annual-report-an...
I may be well out of date here but some years ago I can recall the setters of accounting standards trying to word the leasing rules so that airlines would have to capitalize the aircraft. Up till then they had avoided doing so even though the planes were under a finance lease.
Incidentally, aren't Boeing 737 Max's revenue, rather than capital. I thought there was going to be a UITF, but maybe the ASB kept their noses down, or it just didn't take off.
Given the problems with the 737 Max's, will we be seeing write-downs in the fixed assets? Somehow I doubt it.