Air Arabia outlines early A321neo deployment plans

3 October, 2017

Air Arabia CEO Adel Ali hinted at the possible inclusion of A321neoLR aircraft as part of a 2016 agreement with Air Lease Corporation involving the lease of six A321neo (Forbes, 30-Sep-2017). The aircraft are due to deliver from Jan-2019. Mr Ali said the A321neo will be used to open up new routes to China, Russia, the Far East, and Africa, but will not be used for the European market. "Certainly this is not being ordered just to plug airplanes into Europe... We see there are too many airplanes already flying into Europe. There's overcapacity on certain routes particularly", he said, adding: "We won't rule out anything. But I think we have not looked into Europe yet because we've got enough on the plate for those airplanes already". Air Arabia Maroc however may use the type to boost its eastern European market reach, he added. "Places such as Moscow and Nepal, where we could do with a bit more capacity, but we don't necessarily need to put more frequencies", he said.