Flybe leads way with £5bn deal for planes

Published on Monday 19 July 2010 21:36

FLYBE signalled its commitment to expanding its European short-haul network yesterday by placing orders for up to 140 aircraft valued at $5 billion (£3.3bn).

The airline placed a firm order for 35 of the Brazilian-made Embraer 175 aircraft - to be delivered between 2011 and 2017 and valued at $1.3bn - with options on a further 105 jets.

Jim French, FlyBe's Berwickshire-born chairman and chief executive, said: "The Embraer 175 will give Flybe significant added capacity and is particularly suited to the sector lengths prevalent in Europe that we are most interested in exploiting."

French said now was "a good time to be doing deals with suppliers" and that the new aircraft would underpin its expansion on regional continental routes.

Flybe's bumper order came on another busy day at the Farnborough air show, with about $10bn of orders adding to Monday's $20bn haul for manufacturers. Latin American operator LAN Airlines ordered 50 Airbus A320s for about $4.2bn, while Hong Kong Airlines spent some $5.7bn on Airbus's planes.

Hong Kong Airlines reconfigured an existing order with Airbus to give 15 A350s and ten A330s, with the new element of the order reaching about $2.8bn.

Meanwhile, Boeing announced an order for 12 of its 737 aeroplanes from Irish leasing company Avolon, worth about $921 million.

Jim Albaugh, president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, welcomed the growth of orders, saying: "It's amazing how quickly this market is coming back. Six months ago people were worried about liquidity."

Canadian manufacturer Bombardier added to Monday's orders with a $277m deal for six aircraft from Swiss airline VisaJet and a $213m contract for four planes from an unnamed Russian customer.