Vice President: Utair to get 2 Boeing 737 NG planes in 2020

MOSCOW, Oct 30 (PRIME) -- Russian airline Utair plans to acquire two Boeing 737 NG planes in 2020, Vice President for Network and Fleet Management Dmitry Belokon told reporters on Wednesday.

“There is no understanding on the market now when we will be able to operate (Boeing 737) MAX planes, so we’ve decided to lease the NG planes. We definitely know that we will get two NG planes next year, and we are in negotiations on more,” he said.

“We will take two NG planes from Brazil’s Gol, the planes are about 10 years old,” he said.

“Nevertheless, we suspended a fleet of 500s (Boeing 737-500): five planes last year, seven this year, less than six next year. They are in financial leasing, money has been paid for them. We’ve transferred almost everything into storage, there are almost no expenses on them. The only thing here is that seven of them still have some resource left, we use them as reserve planes.”

Boeing 737-500s are inefficient as they are small and consume a large amount of fuel. “We don’t want to grow from the point of view of the fleet, the amount of 65 aircraft is the amount stipulated by our business model. All new MAX and NG planes will be acquired in the framework of withdrawal of 500s,” he said.

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