Azur Air takes delivery of fourth Boeing 737
Russian charter carrier Azur Air has taken delivery of a Boeing 737-800, the fourth aircraft of the type in its fleet. The aircraft can carry 189 passengers in a single-class layout.
The aircraft will enter commercial service with the airline on August 5, Azur Air reports. It is scheduled to make two return flights to Turkey and Spain from the airline’s base at Domodedovo. The flights are 100% sold out, so in one day the Boeing 737-800 will carry as many as 756 passengers.
The aircraft’s new tail number is VP-BYB. According to open sources, this Boeing 737-800 is 17.2 years old. It was previously operated by Air China.
With the newly delivered aircraft Azur Air’s fleet has grown to 20 aircraft. Besides the four 737-800s mentioned, it operates eight Boeing 757 narrowbodies and the same number of Boeing 767 widebodies. Within one month the carrier is expected to receive one more Boeing 737-800.
It was initially planned that the airline would have five Boeing 737-800s in its fleet before the end of June. The first aircraft of the type arrived at the end of 2016. In February 2017 Azur Air’s in-house maintenance base was approved for Boeing 737NG MRO.
The airline earlier explained that the single-aisles would fit the new route network, optimized for taking passengers from Russian regions to popular leisure destinations outside Russia. The widebody aircraft can now be operated on long-haul flights.
Azur Air is presently Russia’s eighth largest carrier by passenger traffic. From January to June this year it carried 1.557 million passengers, up 82% on the first half of 2016. The seat load factor for the same period grew 2.9 p.p. reaching 96.5%.
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