With nearly 12,000 having been built since the beginning of manufacturing within the slack 1960s, the Boeing 737’s recognition and capacity maintain made the acquisition of every a milestone for any airline. The capacity to fly 189 passengers at speeds as excessive as 827 km/h for a unfold of 5,185 km makes these narrowbody plane a excessive-worth asset. AirExplore, Slovakia’s premier airline, has expanded and up thus a long way its fleet hugely since its acquisition by Avia Solutions Neighborhood final June. As AirExplore CEO Martin Stulajter explains, the capabilities and worth which maintain been added to the airline are serving to to assemble a fleet that is capable of worldwide expansion.
In October 2024, 14 years after the airline’s founding, AirExplore’s fleet consists of 17 plane, including every passenger and cargo variants of Boeing’s 737-800. These subsequent-abilities plane are upgrades of the 737-400s that had been firstly within the airline’s fleet at delivery. Stulajter says that the predominant incompatibility between these two variants is the ability.
READ: Etihad Cargo ramps up belly establish ability with iciness schedule
“One of the most ability of the 737-400 is 168-170 financial system class seats, whereas the 737-800 has a most of 189 financial system class seats,” he says. “It may perchance presumably perchance perchance simply no longer seem so, but those extra dozen seats make a huge incompatibility in revenues given the size of operations of every plane.”
Primarily essentially based on Stulajter, the extra seats of the next-abilities 737 may perchance presumably perchance perchance simply cease up in thousands and thousands of extra earnings.
“For instance, a correct yearly utilization of such plane is ready 3,000 flight hours. If the standard flight length is 3 hours, it manner an airline does about 1,000 flights per year,” he explains. “If the standard rate tag of €250 for those 20 extra seats is done all over those 1,000 flights, the addition of 20,000 passengers portions to €5 million of earnings.”
Besides the earnings good thing in regards to the extra seating ability, the 737-800 additionally affords the airline an increased fluctuate. Primarily essentially based on Stulajter, the form can fly a additional 1.5 hours when when put next with the 737-400, which will increase the aptitude routes and customer inferior the jet can support. With the retirement of the 5 737 Classics within the airline’s fleet done in 2015, the 737-800 changed into a straightforward transition for AirExplore.
Both extra earnings and increased fluctuate had been very important for the transition to the plane form, as these formulation would be important to paying for the expansion. Stulajter remembers when the tag of the 737-800 changed into double that of the Classics.
“One of the most vital substitute needed to happen within the mindset of the folks to blame for the airline’s economics, as we needed to disguise the tag by the usage of the plane better than the Classics,” he says. “We paid for the incompatibility by flying more, and this required us to carry more crew to the firm, which then intended we needed to grow larger than earlier than.”
READ: The client in finding
AirExplore did exactly that. The airline grew to become the greatest in Slovakia and has added a complete of eight 737s in 2024 whereas growing its regulatory approvals and security certifications. One dwelling of development for AirExplore has been cargo, with the service adding seven more 737 freighters, with the latest addition as latest as June 2024. After these additions, the fleet now consists of eight 737-800 freighter plane that previously flew passengers earlier than conversion by every Boeing and US-essentially based fully mostly Aeronautical Engineers Inc.
“The transformed 737-800 freighter flies the an analogous as its passenger model and has the an analogous avionics, but our pilots fight through extra coaching for operation of the cargo door and cargo distribution,” Stulajter says. “We operate these cargo plane within the EU marketplace for predominant integrators be pleased DHL and UPS, and we’re additionally very active within the ad-hoc market the establish we support to switch cargo of all sorts to many varied locations.”
Changing into a narrowbody freighter operator comes with uncommon challenges, as the cargo market experienced quite a lot of shocks for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic that to this gift day maintain noteworthy impacts on the economics of the logistics substitute. To become entertaining for this airline market section, AirExplore increased its capabilities to tackle every process.
“It has nearly been three years since we began working cargo plane. It in all equity of a varied industry ensuing from it does no longer require as heavy utilization of the plane as with the passenger ones, but nonetheless, it’s very liable to the GDP performance of the worldwide financial system with fewer seasonal fluctuations than pax ops,” Stulajter says. “To become a service, we needed to dig deeper into the compliance, going through of unhealthy items and cargo management from the attitude of flight operations engineering.”
Geared up with every 737-800 passenger and cargo variants, AirExplore advantages from the simplicity of single-form operations, to boot to the distinctiveness of that form within the ACMI market.
“Fewer ACMI operators are offering the Boeing product within the European ACMI section when when put next with Airbus plane, which affords us a dinky competitive advantage,” Stulajter says.
With the 737 offering a varied capacity, and the increased ability compounding more earnings, the airline is mulling the addition of the 737 MAX, in step with reporting by Ch-Aviation. Whereas a resolution on future plane kinds may perchance presumably perchance perchance per chance be on the horizon, AirExplore continues to fabricate the specified regulatory approvals to extra magnify its operations all around the globe.
