Jazeera Airways (J9, Kuwait) has ramped up its ALAFCO portfolio with the lessor to place one A320ceo with the Kuwaiti carrier later this month followed by an A320neo in each of November 2019 and September 2020.
ALAFCO said in a stock market filing the A320neo are new-build aircraft to be delivered from Airbus (AIB, Toulouse Blagnac) while the A320ceo is existing inventory.
According to the ch-aviation fleets module, Jazeera Airways operates ten in-house A320 Family jets all of which are leased; eight A320ceo (ALAFCO (one), Avolon (three), GECAS (one), and Goshawk (four)) and one A320neo leased from Park Aerospace Holdings.
Vice President (Marketing & Customer Experience), Andrew Ward, recently told AIN that given the availability of competitively-priced aircraft on the leasing market, Jazeera Airways has held off on issuing an order RFP to Airbus and Boeing.
“We have been considering placing a major RFP to the two main aircraft manufacturers, but that is currently on hold as we are getting some fantastic deals in the market for leased aircraft,” he said. “This is helping us manage our costs and making better business sense. We are well connected with the market and key lessors and we are always getting approached with aircraft availability. The market just happens to be quite buoyant at the moment for what we are looking for.”
The Kuwaiti carrier's network currently sees it connect its Kuwait hub with 26 cities in India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Iraq, Iran, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan.
Later this year, Ward said Jazeera Airways would also launch flights to London Gatwick, Kathmandu in Nepal, and Dhaka in Bangladesh among other destinations.
