Ural Airlines adds to fleet with an Airbus A320

In terms of daily utilisation, Ural Airlines is Russia’s leading A320 family operator (Ural Airlines)

Ural Airlines, Russia’s fifth largest carrier, has taken delivery of an Airbus A320-200, thereby increasing its all-Airbus fleet to 44 narrow-body aircraft. The 10-year-old former Aeroflot A320 is the first of four the airline is expecting to be delivered by the end of May 2018.

The CFM56-5B4-powered A320 (serial number MSN 3410), which has been taken by Ural on an operating lease, has retained its original Aeroflot registration number VP-BKX.

The cabin is configured with 12 business class and 150 economy seats.

The Yekaterinburg-based airline plans to use the aircraft on international services as well as on Russian domestic routes. The aircraft’s first revenue flight for its new operator was on the route Yekaterinburg-Moscow (Sheremetyevo). Ural started to serve this Moscow’s airport on March 25.

Ural Airlines transported 1.04 million passengers in the first two months of 2018, 20 per cent up year-on-year. In the whole of last year, it carried more than eight million passengers (up 24 per cent year-on-year).

The airline’s 44-strong Airbus fleet now consists of 24 A320s, 13 A321s and seven of the smaller A319s. Ural Airlines was named by Airbus as the leading A320 aircraft family operator in Russia, with an average daily utilisation rate of 12.71 hours per unit in 2017.