Becomes An All-Airbus Airline

Russia-based leisure airline iFly has retired the last of its Boeing airplanes and become an all-Airbus carrier for 2019.

Airline Geeks reports that the airline made its last revenue flight with a Boeing 757-200 on December 20th. The lease contract for the aircraft has expired, and it has reportedly been returned to storage.

The airline has adopted a strategy to build capacity incrementally through the introduction of A320 and A330 airplanes to its fleet. It recently took delivery of two A330s and an A319 directly from Airbus. The airline says it needs the newer airplanes to increase its capacity for its normal leisure destinations on the Mediterranean Sea and south-east Asia as well as expanding to trans-Atlantic routes to Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

The iFly fleet currently consists of six A330-200s, one A330-300 and one A319-100. It hopes to nearly double the number of passengers it carries to almost 1.5 million in 2019. In 2018, it recorded 152 percent passenger growth, making it the second-fastest growing airline in Russia.

(Image from file. Papas Dos from Moscow, Russia [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons)

FMI: Source report