With nearly 12,000 having been constructed since the initiating up of production in the leisurely 1960s, the Boeing 737’s popularity and functionality have faith made the acquisition of every a milestone for any airline. The flexibility to fly 189 passengers at speeds as excessive as 827 km/h for a differ of 5,185 km makes these narrowbody airplane a excessive-payment asset. AirExplore, Slovakia’s premier airline, has expanded and as a lot as this point its fleet massively since its acquisition by Avia Solutions Workforce closing June. As AirExplore CEO Martin Stulajter explains, the capabilities and worth which were added to the airline are serving to to produce a fleet that is capable of global expansion.
In October 2024, 14 years after the airline’s founding, AirExplore’s fleet consists of 17 airplane, along with each and every passenger and cargo variants of Boeing’s 737-800. These next-generation airplane are upgrades of the 737-400s that were in the initiating in the airline’s fleet at launch. Stulajter says that the first inequity between these two variants is the capacity.
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“Potentially the most capacity of the 737-400 is 168-170 economy class seats, whereas the 737-800 has a most of 189 economy class seats,” he says. “It will most likely well also no longer seem so, nevertheless these extra dozen seats originate an unlimited inequity in revenues given the scale of operations of every airplane.”
Based on Stulajter, the extra seats of the next-generation 737 can kill in millions of extra income.
“As an illustration, a upright yearly utilization of such airplane is ready 3,000 flight hours. If the average flight dimension is 3 hours, it plan an airline does about 1,000 flights per yr,” he explains. “If the average label price of €250 for these 20 extra seats is done across these 1,000 flights, the addition of 20,000 passengers quantities to €5 million of income.”
Rather then the income attend of the extra seating capacity, the 737-800 furthermore affords the airline an elevated differ. Based on Stulajter, the style can fly an additional 1.5 hours when put next to the 737-400, which increases the functionality routes and fervent buyer cross the jet can abet. With the retirement of the five 737 Classics in the airline’s fleet done in 2015, the 737-800 used to be a simple transition for AirExplore.
Each and every extra income and elevated differ were indispensable for the transition to the airplane style, as these positive aspects would be indispensable to paying for the expansion. Stulajter remembers when the payment of the 737-800 used to be double that of the Classics.
“Potentially the most important commerce needed to happen in the mindset of the folks to blame for the airline’s economics, as we needed to duvet the payment by utilizing the airplane extra than the Classics,” he says. “We paid for the inequity by flying extra, and this required us to bring extra crew to the firm, which then supposed we needed to grow higher than earlier than.”
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AirExplore did exactly that. The airline grew to change into the largest in Slovakia and has added a total of eight 737s in 2024 whereas increasing its regulatory approvals and safety certifications. One dwelling of increase for AirExplore has been cargo, with the provider along with seven extra 737 freighters, with the most up-to-date addition as fresh as June 2024. After these additions, the fleet now consists of eight 737-800 freighter airplane that previously flew passengers earlier than conversion by each and every Boeing and US-basically based Aeronautical Engineers Inc.
“The remodeled 737-800 freighter flies connected to its passenger model and has the same avionics, nevertheless our pilots fight thru extra coaching for operation of the cargo door and load distribution,” Stulajter says. “We operate these cargo airplane in the EU marketplace for indispensable integrators appreciate DHL and UPS, and we’re furthermore very active in the ad-hoc market where we support to cross cargo of all kinds to many assorted locations.”
Turning precise into a narrowbody freighter operator comes with unheard of challenges, because the cargo market experienced numerous shocks in some unspecified time in the future of the COVID-19 pandemic that to this day have faith tall impacts on the economics of the logistics industry. To alter into ready for this airline market segment, AirExplore elevated its capabilities to handle every job.
“It has nearly been three years since we started working cargo airplane. It’s miles a little bit of a undeniable industry because of it would no longer require as heavy utilization of the airplane as with the passenger ones, nevertheless alternatively, it is amazingly at risk of the GDP performance of the worldwide economy with fewer seasonal fluctuations than pax ops,” Stulajter says. “To turn precise into a provider, we needed to dig deeper into the compliance, facing of terrible goods and load management from the angle of flight operations engineering.”
Geared up with each and every 737-800 passenger and cargo variants, AirExplore benefits from the simplicity of single-style operations, as properly because the arena of abilities of that style in the ACMI market.
“Fewer ACMI operators are providing the Boeing product in the European ACMI segment when put next to Airbus airplane, which affords us a tiny competitive attend,” Stulajter says.
With the 737 providing a assorted functionality, and the elevated capacity compounding extra income, the airline is mulling the addition of the 737 MAX, in accordance with reporting by Ch-Aviation. While a resolution on future airplane kinds can also potentially be on the horizon, AirExplore continues to electrify the compulsory regulatory approvals to extra develop its operations across the globe.
