Reading a lease waterfall: who returns, when, and whether reserves cover it
· Fletaris team
A portfolio is easiest to manage as one list of returns in date order. Three questions decide where to look first.
A lease waterfall lists every aircraft in a portfolio by the date its lease ends. It is the simplest view of what is coming, and on a spreadsheet it is often where the analysis stops: a date per aircraft, sorted.
The date is the least interesting part. What matters is what each aircraft will look like on that date, and what it will cost to bring it to the condition the lease asks for.
Three questions per aircraft
Will it be ready? Each return has conditions: check status, remaining life on engines and landing gear, records. Projected forward to the return date, each condition is met, marginal or failing.
What will it cost to close what is failing? A failing condition is either work to be done before return or compensation to be agreed. Either way it has a price, and the price changes as the date gets closer.
Do the reserves cover it? Where the lease collects maintenance reserves, the balance on the return date can be set against the expected cost. A shortfall is a negotiation to prepare for; a surplus is a reimbursement question.
Where to look first
Sort the waterfall by urgency, not only by date: aircraft already past their return date, returns where conditions are failing, and returns where an extension notice is due soon. A return a year away with a reserve shortfall can need attention before a return next month that is fully covered.
Fletaris builds this view from the records the lessor already holds and keeps it current as the records change, so the waterfall shows readiness and cost at each date, not only the date.
Fletaris reads the records lessors already keep and shows what each aircraft will need, cost and owe in the months ahead. It does not audit those records; it turns them into foresight. See Fletaris Air
