Morgan Stanley has unloaded its aircraft leasing arm for a higher than expected $2.5 billion, reports the London Telegraph. London-based private equity outfit Terra Firma was the lucky buyer.

The deal is part of the revamping under new CEO John Mack. The bank took a $1 billion write down on the losing aircraft business and its sale signals Mack's strategy of selling off non-core businesses. As the Telegraph notes, the aircraft leasing business was all the rage a few years back when airlines decided it was better accounting to lease, not own, their planes.

And so enter the big money guys trying to turn a buck. GE and AIG own the two biggest aircraft leasing operations in the world and AWAS, the Morgan Stanley division, was the third with 155 planes. Others who have tried their hand at aircraft leasing include Disney, Pitney-Bowes and Whirlpool.

Morgan Stanley managed to get in on the tail-end of the boom. In 2000, the bank bought AWAS from News Corp., which owned its parent airline in Australia in the 1990s. Not long after the purchase, the global travel industry went into a slump as a result of 9/11 and the leasing business never really recovered.