Airblue Press Release: Airblue Expands Fleet

[PK777]

Press Release: Airblue Expands Fleet

January 19, 2006: Airblue, Pakistan's fastest-growing domestic airline, has acquired two more A321 Aircraft on dry lease which will be inducted in its fleet next week to consolidate its domestic network. This will increase the fleet size of airblue to 6 aircraft and will increase the daily operation to 30 flights daily.

Airblue, Pakistan's next generation airline, has been in operation for 18 months and has transported more than 900,000 passengers throughout its network in the short span.

The two new Aircraft are the latest fly-by-wire technology Airbus A321s which is similar to the airblue current fleet -- only with a longer fuselage providing for additional passenger and cargo capacity to meet the heavy demand.

The induction of more aircraft and network expansion will provide for increased job opportunities as airblue's business model looks at Pakistan-registered aircraft with Pakistani cockpit and cabin crew, along with all local engineering and support manpower expertise.

Each Aircraft will have a dual configuration of 24 business class and 158 economy class seats to cater for more aggressive marketing and will provide additional capacity on sectors of greater demand such as Karachi-Islamabad and Karachi Lahore to meet passenger needs.

With the induction of these two new Aircraft, Airblue now have a fleet of 6 Aircraft -- one of the newly acquired Aircraft will be positioned in Dubai and will replace the wet lease Aircraft which Airblue was operating from Dubai.

The second Aircraft will be positioned in Karachi and will be utilized in its consolidating the domestic flight schedule, increasing the capacity to Lahore, Peshawar and Dubai, and also introducing a new destination --- Faisalabad.

The first of the two A321 is expected to land in Islamabad tonight and will be positioned in Karachi. The second aircraft will arrive in Pakistan next week and inducted into operation immediately.


Copyright Airblue

[AirBlue]

oye good....so LYP is on the list....guess they will have to do something about the MUX sector aswell....is there enough load on the KHI-LYP sector? cuz as far as i know ED is flying to all places out of KHI being thier hub...

[PK777]

PIA KHI-LYP flights are usually full even on the DXB-LYP sector aswell, so Airblue had to do something about it Aero Asia is the only other airline currently serving LYP

[hasan saleem]

With the induction of these two A321s, the A321 based in Dubai these days taken on wet lease will be returned?

If thats correct then Airblue will have a fleet of 5, 3 A320s and 2 A321s,

The A320s were taken on dry lease from Airbus Asset Management,

The A321s taken on dry lease from ILFC for a period of 5 yrs

The Order for 8 A320s and 2 A330s stand as per order and deliveries start in 2007.

An A300-600 will be taken up on wet lease based in Manchester for Lhr-Man and Isl-Man flights starting this summer

This is what I can gather from my understanding of the Fleet Structure.

Kindly correct me if I am wrong!

Airblue you could add on to this.

Thanks

[AirBlue]

yup u r right but as far as i know the A320 in DXB the wet leased one will be sent to KHI and will operate from there

[Amaad Lone]

Any idea on the pilot numbers at Air blue.

With the fleet increasing from three A320s to six A321/320s the number of pilots must have gone up.

Having an all jet fleet, does Air blue only hire pilots with previous jet experiance or does it get rookie pilots fresh out of training schools.

A friend of mine who is a F.27 captain said that a whole bunch of PIA pilots and captains are negociating packages with Air blue, and if the deal goes through, quite a few will leave PIA, specially the fokker crew.

[B777240ER]

Airblue will have a fleet of 5, 3 A320s and 2 A321s

Don't forget that A320 they leased from Atlas Jet.

Remember the one with the red belly

[hasan saleem]

Yep the red belly one, its on a wet lease and based in dubai

3 A320s Dry Leased from Airbus Asset Mangement
2 A321s Dry Leased from IFLC
1 A321s Wet Leased from Atlas Air

My curiousity was wheter the Wet leased one will be returned after the 2 A321s arrive. The A321 on wet leased will be based in karachi and and the dry leased A321 will go to Dubai, thats what forum member Airblue has mentioned

[sheriyars]

Any idea on the pilot numbers at Air blue.


A friend of mine who is a F.27 captain said that a whole bunch of PIA pilots and captains are negociating packages with Air blue, and if the deal goes through, quite a few will leave PIA, specially the fokker crew.

R u sure amaad ,y will a pia pilot leave pia for airblue,even if there is a pay difference,there are lot of chances of promotion in pia,rather then airblue.

by the way this is my first post welcome

[flyingsystem]

Amaad Lone
PostPosted: Sat Jan 28, 2006 8:11 am Post subject:
Any idea on the pilot numbers at Air blue.

I think its 3 pairs of crew per aircraft.

Do u know why the airblue orders (A330 and A320) are not on the order book of Airbus?

[hasan saleem]

Airblue gets two aircraft

KARACHI, Feb 6: Airblue has acquired two Airbus A231 aircraft which are being inducted in its fleet this week, increasing the private airline’s fleet size to six aircraft and weekly operation to over 180 flights.

This was stated by Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, chief operating officer of the airline, at a ceremony held on Monday to mark the induction of the aircraft.

He said the Airblue would be introducing daily flights to Faisalabad from Feb 13 and would expand its domestic horizons to six cities in Pakistan as the air passenger traffic had registered an unprecedented 38 per cent growth during the past one year.

Mr Abbasi said the new domestic schedule offered three round-trip flights daily from Karachi to both Lahore and Islamabad and daily round trip flights from Karachi to Quetta, Peshawar and Faisalabad.

He said the international schedule offered two round-trip flights daily from Karachi to Dubai and one daily round-trip flight from Lahore to Dubai. “In addition, there are four flights a week from Peshawar to Dubai and three flights from Islamabad to Dubai on a round-trip basis.

ETIHAD AIRWAYS: UAE’s Etihad Airways has announced three new routes to Pakistan.

According to a press release, from Feb 13 the new destinations of Islamabad and Peshawar will be added to Etihad’s current Pakistan service to Karachi, with Lahore starting on Feb 20.

The three new routes are expected to see a major increase in trade between the UAE and Pakistan, it added.

Source: Dawn

[AirBlue]

y will a pia pilot leave pia for airblue,even if there is a pay difference,there are lot of chances of promotion in pia,rather then airblue.

by the way this is my first post welcome

why wont they? they are going to start at around 70K as a f/o and that also on an A320. ED will have the A330's in a years time inshallah and they will be promoted . Flying the A320's they also have more chances to move over to QR, GF, etc

[Moin]

Flying the ED A320's and soon hopefully A330's will be a stepping stone for them to eventually move onto QR and GF and even EY and EK in the case of A330's.

A PIA 743 FO won't really have any place to go, unless he's transferred to the 777 whereas a PIA 777 FO can move onto EK, SV and one day even QR.

[Abbas Ali]

Saw an AirBlue Airbus A321 for the second time over Lahore. The aircraft is painted in full colours of AirBlue.

[Amaad Lone]

The fokker captain who mentioned PIA pilots joining Air Blue was talking about getting 300,000 rupees per month for ex PIA 737 & F.27 captains.

As Air Blue is here to stay, leaving PIA for a better paying Air Blue might not be a bad idea, specially for fokker captains who might climb to 737s on PIA, or current 747 first officers who will go to the ATR42 fleet.

So flying A320/A321 might be an immediate step up, eventually going to the A330 in a few years, while in PIA their counter parts will still be flying the 737 or at the most the A310.