Saudi Arabian low-cost carrier flynas said on Monday that it will buy 80 Airbus A320neo passenger jets at a list price cost of around $8.6 billion. The order includes an upgrade of an existing order for 20 A320ceos (current engine option) to the new engine option (neo) version plus 60 new planes. The airline’s entire current fleet is leased.
The dollar amount of the order was revealed last Thursday by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s Kingdom Holding Company which owns 34% of flynas. The number and type of aircraft were not announced until Monday morning.
In February of last year the airline said its fleet comprised 29 Airbus jets in the A320 family. According to planespotters.net, 27 of the jets are Airbus planes, one A319 and 26 A320s, and 2 737s from The Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA).
In August of last year flynas leased the two 737s from Turkish budget carrier Pegasus. In October flynas and Pegasus announced a code-share arrangement. Pegasus flies 58 Boeing 737s and 21 Airbus A320s about half which are leased. It’s a fair guess that the two 737s in the flynas fleet were leased as part of the agreement with Pegasus.
This is one of those deals that is essentially captive. The Saudi carrier has settled on the Airbus 320 and barring some irresistibly compelling reason to change, the budget airline will stick with the A320 because it is much cheaper to train crews and provide maintenance for one airplane instead of two.
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