La Compagnie (B0, Paris Orly) founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Frantz Yvelin says the French transatlantic specialist is very interested in the B737 MAX 10 for its fleet renewal plan.
Yvelin earlier this year confirmed talks with both Airbus (AIB, Toulouse Blagnac) and Boeing into the A321neo and B737 MAX 9 as replacements for La Compagnie's current fleet to two all-premium configured B757-200s. The New Generation aircraft could be used in developing new routes to the US West Coast, South America and even Asia.
"We are very interested by the B737 MAX 10, which may come on the market but is not confirmed yet, and we welcome, as well, the few recent announcements from Boeing (BOE, Washington National) that it may reconsider [making a] next-generation 757, a middle-market single-aisle airplane," he told Business Travel News in an interview. "Of course, that's something we'd like to move as fast as we can into, and that should happen in 2019."
Boeing's Vice President and Chief Project Engineer for the B737 MAX program, Michael Teal, has been quoted as saying that while the US manufacturer is looking closely at making a stretched MAX variant, no firm decision has yet been taken to build the aircraft.
On his firm's recent decision to abandon the UK-US market, Yvelin said the board had decided not to risk investing in such a relatively young route given the uncertainty of how the UK's exit from the European Union would play out.
"..what we realized was that it was making more sense to focus on Parisian service now to avoid potential risk of keeping investing on a potential market where no one knows what will happen in two years," he said adding that only once the nature of the UK's relationship with the bloc was known would La Compagnie consider returning to London.
