Serbia’s Jat Airways has decided to lease 2 Boeing B737-700 aircraft, which will enter its fleet during September 2009. The airline from which the aircraft will be leased from has already been selected. One of the aircraft is a B737-700 with winglets currently operating for AeroMexico. It was made in 2004. The lease of the two aircraft is part of the airline’s 5 year development plan. On July 9, the airline’s management will make further decisions on the fate of its current and future fleet. More new aircraft will be added during 2010.EX-YU Aviation News Blog can exclusively reveal that Jat will be returning its sole Boeing B737-400 once the 700 series aircraft enter service. The B737-400 registered YU-AOS (made in 1989) has been with Jat since 2004 and is leased from CIT Aerospace. The B737-700s will be deployed to popular destinations such as London, Moscow and Zurich. The new fleet addition will make Jat’s fleet more reliable after mechanical problems caused major delays during this week, emphasising the fleet shortage Jat is currently facing. At this present time there are no plans to introduce the B737-700s on Jat’s longest service, to Abu Dhabi, although major changes are expected on this line starting in spring 2010 - aircraft and frequency wise.
Meanwhile, the airline continues to refurbish its B737-300 fleet. A further 2 aircraft have received new seats in economy class.
its about time they bring in newer aircraft. i hope something replaces those B737-300's on the BEG-AUH route. Ive flown on the BEG-DXB a couple of times, and ive never had such an unpleasant trip in my life. The new flights to AUH dont properly connect to Australian destinations, such as Melbourne, where there is an over 12 hour wait in Abu Dhabi when flying to Melbourne! Will be intresting to see new changes, i hope its soon and fast.
ReplyDeleteCould it mean that with the new aircraft, the stop at Larnaca will come to an end when Jat flies to Abu Dhabi?
ReplyDeletePerhaps Jat Airways can fly to Larnaca as a seperate destination in the near future.....
A cautious move by JAT, possibly due to their financial situation.
ReplyDeleteThey could have done a lot worse than this, at least this way they can 'try before they buy'. It wouldn't be surprising to see more of these added to the fleet in the future, a mixture of leased and bought aircraft.
What does this mean though for the Airbus order and recent meetings? Will that money go towards the new AT7s?
@ Anonymous:
It's the whole joint problem that most of the world ignorantly thinks that everything in Australia is close to Sydney (yeah, right!), and little Johnny's former ruling that at least 50% of international flights must operate from SYD which only recently has proved to be short-sighted, illogical and detrimental for tourism.
The timing of the JAT flights are pretty useless for Melbournians (0 out of 7 connect) and even for Sydneysiders - only 4 of the 11 weekly flights to AUH actually connect with semi-decent times.
@frequent flier: The order with Airbus would only alter the ATR order (don’t know why but that’s how the management announced). We will see what happens during next weeks meetings.
ReplyDeleteAs for Abu Dhabi the flights will continue to operate via Larnaca. There are rumours that Jat will try to return to Dubai next summer and begin cooperation with Emirates again (since EK is not doing very well to Australia since the crisis began and since it dumped cooperation with all airlines). Last year EK’s flights from Auckland, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Christ Church and Perth all connected well with Jat’s flights from Dubai to Belgrade.
@ frequentflyer,
ReplyDeleteWould you mind explaining a little bit more about the whole Sydney situation (for those of us who live on the other side of the world and are not up-to-date with the happenings in Australia)? "Johnny", I'm assuming is Bush's boyfriend? What would be the benefit of operating 50% of int'l flights out of Sydney?
@ Anonymous:
ReplyDeleteYes, you are right to guess little Johnny (fmr PM John Howard) is "Bush's boyfriend".
To slightly paraphrase DOTARS (the Australian Federal Transport body) policy as recently as 2007, a minimum of 51% of international flights had to arrive or depart from SYD.
This appeared logical to many countries and airlines, as Sydney is the largest city in Australia and has the busiest airport. However, it is detrimental to tourism in Queensland (both Nth Qld and Brisbane/Gold Coast), and international trade in Melbourne and Perth. Increases could occur at other airports than SYD only if there was a similar increase there.
Things have changed in the last few years: MEL is no longer facing a 500,000 seat annual international shortfall (quote Wikipedia); EY, EK and CX have all significantly increased flights; D7, VA and DL recently started operations, QR are set to fly to the country in coming months. This despite cutbacks from BA and QF, and OS stopping services altogether.
Many people from overseas can't fathom the enormous distances in Australia. It is one of the few counries in the world where you can be in a plane for over 5 hours and still be in the same country (like Russia, Canada and the US), however major cities are often 1000km away. SYD also faces the problem of night curfew and high congestion, but it is a sizeable tourist destination and traffic hub (for the SW-Pacific) in its own right.
There may also have been some parochialism in the old Sydney-Melbourne rivalry at work here, as Howard was often accused of being 'Sydney-centric'.
@ EX-YU
What were the flight arr/dep times for JU to/from DXB? I assume the wave you mention was the 0400-0600 busy period. For OU to start their own flights to DXB (non-stop with a 319 is possible), they would need to move around their morning operations, or acquire another 319 (needed anyway).
I think to ensure that inferior 'low-cost' EK operations don't happen to BEG, ZAG etc that the national airlines should operate their own flights that are conincidental timewise (though perhaps not codeshare). When you are flying long distances, you want good connections and times.
Whilst EK is slowing down, i'm sure it is the same as every other airline at present. It will just have a large impact on their ambitious expansion plans...
@ frequentflyer,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reply. Yeah, I kind of assumed that part of the problem might be favouritism or kick-backs received by politicians (that is why I wanted to know whether Johnny boy was John Howard). I don't know much about the man, except that he had received some heavy criticism from the public, primarily for his support of Bush's agenda. Anyways, I didn't want to get off topic. Thanks, again.