Ryanair Holdings has placed a firm order with Boeing (BOE, Washington National) for 150 B737-10s with options for a further 150 and is set to, for the first time in its modern history, operate two variants of the same-generation aircraft.
"We expect half of this order will replace older B737-800NGs while the remaining 150 aircraft will facilitate controlled, sustainable growth to just over 300 million guests per annum by 2034. This order, coupled with our remaining B737-8-200 Gamechanger deliveries, will create 10,000 new jobs for highly paid aviation professionals over the next decade," Chief Executive Michael O'Leary said.
The Irish holding did not disclose the expected delivery timeline for the larger variant. The B737-10 has yet to be certified and, according to a recent Boeing disclosure, is expected to enter into service in 2024.
Ryanair currently operates 397 B737-800s and 103 B737-8-200s across its four Air Operator's Certificates (Ryanair, Malta Air, Buzz (Poland), and Ryanair UK). Its Lauda Europe unit operates twenty-nine A320-200s. The holding has a further 107 B737-8-200s on order. It is currently the only operator of the larger-capacity variant of the B737-8 in the world.
Europe's largest low-cost carrier has religiously followed a single-type fleet strategy since it transformed from a regional carrier into a mainline in the early 1990s, when the European Union liberalised its aviation policy. Its fleet comprised exclusively B737-200s until 1999, when it started its rollover to the B737-800NGs. It briefly operated six B737-300s in 2003-2004, the ch-aviation fleets history module, but retired both the -200s and the -300s by the end of 2005. Since then, the airline has operated only one variant per generation, with deliveries of the MAX-8-200 beginning in 2021. The carrier has a single B737-700, currently placed on the Buzz AOC, which is used as a corporate aircraft, for crew training, and sporadically as a backup for scheduled services.
