There will be more Boeings

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   As BANKO discovered, ‘Transaero’ Airline Company received another Boeing-747 for leasing. As the two previous planes, Boeing-727 was built in the 80s and it earlier belonged to «Virgin Atlantic», a British airline company. Sergey Byikhal, PR director of ‘Transaero’, informed a BANKO correspondent that this plane will fly regularly to Israel, Thailand and Maldives, it will also make charter flights to Egypt, India and the Dominican Republic. He also added that according to the agreement signed by ‘Transaero’, the company will acquire the fourth Boeing-747 until the end of this year and the fifth one – in the next year. Earlier on, the carrier planned to get 4 planes of the model. Also in 2006 the airline will acquire Boeing-737-800 Next-Generation. Such an enlargement, according to Byikhal was dictated by the ‘growth of the company and a high demand for seat which will be especially visible during winter holidays’.
   « ‘Transaero’ is not the only company that decided to acquire its own ‘Boeings’. According to the investment memorandum of the air holding ‘Air Union’, during 2007-2008 ‘Kras Air’ is planning to get two medium liners Boeing – 757-200, in addition to the two Boeings -767-200ER they already own. According to Gennadiy Shcherbakov, deputy director of ‘KD-Avia’, the carrier is now using 4 Boeings-737-300 and expects to receive two more planes of the same model. Nevertheless, according to experts, ‘Transaero’ is bidding on 747 taking into account that none of the Russian competitors has such planes.
   «Yet, market players, discussing competitive advantage of the acquisition, agreed that the plane cannot be called universal. ‘Because of Boeing-747, there are often many unsold tickets. Therefore, to avoid the problem, these planes should be used on mainstream destinations like, for example, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia or Dubai,’ believed Anatoly Bozhkov, senior manager of the charter department of ‘Intourist’. To the contrary, Alexey Emelianov, head of department of charter flights, says that using of Boeing-747 is only reasonable if it is used on more than 8-charter flights.