OREANDA-NEWS. March 11, 2008. S7 Airlines, the largest domestic Russian airline, acquired on lease a state-of-the-art airliner Airbus A319. The airplane flew from France to one of S7 Airlines’ base airports Tolmachevo (Novosibirsk) on February 29, 2008.

This airplane acquired within the program of the strategic development and improvement of S7 Ailines’ aircraft fleet became the seventeenth Airbus A319 in the company’s fleet. The airliner was manufactured in 2002 and before had been used by Northwest Airlines.

The new A319 will complete its first commercial flight on the route Novosibirsk - Moscow on March 5 after customs will have been cleared and the aircraft information will have been entered into the aircraft operator certificate. The airplane was designed to carry 128 passengers, its economy and business class compartments are comfortably arranged.

The acquisition of the state-of-the-art Airbus A319 is the next stage of the massive replacement of S7 Airlines’ fleet which began in 2007. Before the end of 2008 the airline will receive four more new foreign-made airplanes Airbus А320. The first airliner А320 for S7 Airlines will get off the assembly line of the manufacturer plant (Toulouse, France) at the end of March 2008.

Within this program which will continue up to 2014, several big contracts were concluded with the world’s leading civil aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Airbus and with leasing companies for the delivery of new airplanes:    "  25 Airbus А320s, delivery begins in 2009;
    "  10 Boeing 737-800s, delivery begins in 2010;
    "  15 Boeing 787 Dreamliners, delivery begins in 2014 (the airline will become the first in Russia to operate these most modern airplanes).

At present S7 Airlines’ aircraft fleet consists of 66 airliners: seventeen А319s, seven А310s, five Boeings-737, nine Il-86s and twenty-eight Tu-154 Мs. By 2014 over 70 new long-distance foreign-made airplanes will be added to S7 Airlines’ fleet. By 2009 all Il-86s, and by 2013 all Tu-154s, will be withdrawn from the airline’s fleet.