Ural Airlines to receive four aircraft in 2017

Ural Airlines has established its own technical center, adapted to perform A320 heavy maintenance (Photo by Ural Airlines)

The fifth largest Russian air carrier Ural Airlines will add four single-aisle Airbus A320 family aircraft to its the fleet in 2017. These aircraft will be received as part of the ongoing fleet renewal program.

The cooperation between the Russian airline and the European manufacturer has already lasted for 10 years. The transfer to A320-only fleet took place in October 2011. Today, the company operates 37 airframes of the family including 19 A320 aircraft, 11 A321 aircraft and seven A319 aircraft.

At present, the average flight hours of the airline’s fleet is more than 11 hours per day. The aircraft log more than 3.8 thousand hours per year. In the future, the airline intends to increase this annual level to 4 thousand hours.

According to Ural Airlines representative, the transition to the single type fleet required infrastructure changes. The airline has established its own training center for pilots, which has flight simulator installed, as well as its own technical center, adapted to perform the aircraft heavy maintenance.

In January- September Ural Airlines passenger traffic has grown by 17% and amounted to 4.982 million passengers. During the same period, the carrier more than doubled its net profit (by 2.1 times), to 3.298 billion rubles. The carrier’s revenue since the beginning of the year has increased by 3.4% to 44.718 billion rubles.