With practically 12,000 having been constructed for the reason that launch up of manufacturing in the gradual 1960s, the Boeing 737’s recognition and functionality delight in made the acquisition of every and each a milestone for any airline. The skill to cruise 189 passengers at speeds as high as 827 km/h for a range of 5,185 km makes these narrowbody aircraft a high-designate asset. AirExplore, Slovakia’s premier airline, has expanded and updated its fleet vastly since its acquisition by Avia Solutions Neighborhood final June. As AirExplore CEO Martin Stulajter explains, the capabilities and price which had been added to the airline are serving to to make a fleet that’s able to world expansion.
In October 2024, 14 years after the airline’s founding, AirExplore’s fleet contains 17 aircraft, including both passenger and cargo variants of Boeing’s 737-800. These next-skills aircraft are upgrades of the 737-400s that had been in the beginning in the airline’s fleet at launch. Stulajter says that the major incompatibility between these two variants is the skill.
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“The utmost skill of the 737-400 is 168-170 economic system class seats, whereas the 737-800 has a maximum of 189 economic system class seats,” he says. “It can maybe maybe no longer seem so, but those further dozen seats produce a huge incompatibility in revenues given the size of operations of every and each aircraft.”
In step with Stulajter, the further seats of the next-skills 737 would possibly maybe finish up in millions of extra income.
“As an illustration, a respectable yearly utilization of such aircraft is about 3,000 flight hours. If the moderate flight dimension is 3 hours, it plan an airline does about 1,000 flights per year,” he explains. “If the moderate designate designate of €250 for those 20 further seats is completed during those 1,000 flights, the addition of 20,000 passengers amounts to €5 million of income.”
As adversarial to the income succor of the further seating skill, the 737-800 also presents the airline an increased range. In step with Stulajter, the form can cruise a further 1.5 hours in contrast with the 737-400, which increases the doable routes and customer homely the jet can succor. With the retirement of the five 737 Classics in the airline’s fleet completed in 2015, the 737-800 was once an straightforward transition for AirExplore.
Both extra income and increased range had been vital for the transition to the aircraft form, as these aspects would be a need to-wish to paying for the expansion. Stulajter remembers when the price of the 737-800 was once double that of the Classics.
“Primarily the most important alternate had to happen in the mindset of the folks liable for the airline’s economics, as we had to veil the price by utilizing the aircraft extra than the Classics,” he says. “We paid for the incompatibility by flying extra, and this required us to bring extra employees to the corporate, which then supposed we had to grow better than sooner than.”
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AirExplore did precisely that. The airline grew to turn into the major in Slovakia and has added a whole of eight 737s in 2024 whereas increasing its regulatory approvals and safety certifications. One region of development for AirExplore has been cargo, with the carrier including seven extra 737 freighters, with the most up-to-date addition as fresh as June 2024. After these additions, the fleet now contains eight 737-800 freighter aircraft that beforehand flew passengers sooner than conversion by both Boeing and US-basically basically based mostly Aeronautical Engineers Inc.
“The transformed 737-800 freighter flies the identical as its passenger model and has the identical avionics, but our pilots buckle down and do extra working in direction of for operation of the cargo door and cargo distribution,” Stulajter says. “We unbiased these cargo aircraft in the EU market for major integrators worship DHL and UPS, and we’re also very active in the advert-hoc market where we again to switch cargo of all kinds to many different areas.”
Becoming a narrowbody freighter operator comes with abnormal challenges, as the cargo market skilled diverse shocks correct thru the COVID-19 pandemic that to for the time being delight in mammoth impacts on the economics of the logistics change. To turn into ready for this airline market segment, AirExplore increased its capabilities to tackle each and each job.
“It has practically been three years since we started working cargo aircraft. It is a long way a little little bit of a favorable enterprise on memoir of it would no longer require as heavy utilization of the aircraft as with the passenger ones, but on the replace hand, it’s extraordinarily at effort of the GDP efficiency of the realm economic system with fewer seasonal fluctuations than pax ops,” Stulajter says. “To turn into a carrier, we had to dig deeper into the compliance, coping with of awful goods and cargo management from the perspective of flight operations engineering.”
Equipped with both 737-800 passenger and cargo variants, AirExplore advantages from the simplicity of single-form operations, besides to the individuality of that form in the ACMI market.
“Fewer ACMI operators are providing the Boeing product in the European ACMI segment in contrast with Airbus aircraft, which provides us a runt competitive advantage,” Stulajter says.
With the 737 providing a favorable functionality, and the increased skill compounding extra income, the airline is mulling the addition of the 737 MAX, in accordance with reporting by Ch-Aviation. While a call on future aircraft kinds would possibly maybe potentially be on the horizon, AirExplore continues to make the vital regulatory approvals to further produce better its operations during the globe.
