Hot on the heels of yesterday’s massive Lion Air Airbus order, Ryanair has come up trumps with its own record order (for a European airline) for 175 Boeing 737-800 aircraft.
Ryanair currently operates 305 Boeing 737-800s on routes from its bases across Europe, offering low fares.
The new aircraft will partially replace older examples in the fleet, but mainly allow the fleet and route network to grow.
Ryanair CEO, Michale O’Leary, said: “Ryanair is pleased to sign this agreement with Boeing to purchase 175 new 737-800 jets, which will expand our fleet to over 400 units, creating over 3,000 new jobs for pilots, cabin crew and engineers, while allowing us to grow our low-cost airline service by about 5 percent per annum over the next several years and take our traffic to 100 million passengers by March 2019.”
So spotters in Europe will have some more numbers to crunch as deliveries arrive until 2018. Ryanair continues to evaluate the benefits of Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft which enters service in 2017.
