Greater Bay Airlines (HB, Hong Kong International) plans to increase its fleet from three aircraft to 22 by 2027 says CEO Stanley Hui Hon-chung at an event late last week marking the start of the airline's scheduled passenger operations to Tokyo Narita.
"At present, we are running three aircraft. We aim to extend our aircraft fleet to 22 by 2027. This is our mid-term planning," he told the South China Morning Post. "We will focus on short-haul trips between Asia-Pacific and mainland China with Beijing and Shanghai as our next destinations. We also target to double our service to Tokyo and Taipei." Greater Bay Airlines only commenced revenue operations in July 2022.
ch-aviation PRO airlines reveals Greater Bay Airlines presently flies a trio of B737-800s on lease from ICBC Financial Leasing. In addition to Tokyo Narita, the airline now flies to Bangkok Suvarnabhumi, Seoul Incheon, and Taipei Taoyuan. Greater Bay Airlines has no confirmed aircraft orders with either Boeing or Airbus but major investor and Greater Bay Airlines chairman Bill Wong Cho-bau operates Donghai Airlines (DZ, Shenzhen) and that airline has twelve B737-8s on order and already has an extensive B737-800 fleet. ch-aviation has approached Greater Bay Airlines regarding their fleet expansion plans.
Hui noted the inaugural Narita flight was 80% full, a load he said he was pleased with. "I am happy with this result as we only rolled this out in a short period of time. The roundtrip Narita flights are operating daily."
