OREANDA-NEWS. April 07, 2008. S7 Airlines, Russia’s largest air carrier by the number of transported passengers on domestic aviation routes, took delivery of a modern, new Airbus A320-200, which it is leasing from ILFC Company. Commissioned in Toulouse (France), the airplane was the first of four A320 aircraft that S7 Airlines will receive directly from the manufacturer for the summer season, reported the press-centre of S7 Airlines.

At the presentation of the new S7 Airlines airplane in Toulouse, Vladislav Filev, General Director of OAO Sibir Airlines, noted that “the receipt of the first A320-200 from the Airbus plant is the beginning of the implementation of large contracts for the delivery of new airplanes as part of the fulfillment of S7 Airlines’ strategic program to renew and modernize its fleet. By the summer season of 2008 our passengers will fly on three more new A320 airliners, and in 2009 delivery will begin of the next lot of 25 Airbus A320s. The A320 series will be the basis of S7 Airlines’ long-distance fleet; currently 17 Airbus A319s are already being used on our flights.”

From Toulouse the new airliner will immediately fly to Tolmachievo (Novosibirsk), one of S7 Airlines’ base airports, for customs clearance.

In April a new Airbus A320-200 will begin to be operated on the Moscow-Barnaul and Moscow-Krasnodar routes. The other three aircraft, as they are commissioned, will transport passengers on the Moscow-Kemerovo, Moscow-Sochi, Moscow-Novosibirsk and Moscow-Frankfurt (Germany) routes, as well as Novosibirsk-Vladivostok and Novosibirsk-Beijing (China).

Tu-154 aircraft had previously been used on these routes. In the summer period Airbus A320-200 airplanes will be used on S7 Airlines’ flights from Moscow to Varnu and Burgas. The choice of the airports where the new airplanes will fly is based on a commercial analysis of the routes and the technical capabilities of the airports. So, for example, the Tomsk and Omsk airports are not yet technically ready to accept the A320. However, S7 Airlines is ready to operate flights to these cities on airplanes of this type.

The Airbus A320-200 airliner is a modern, narrow-body airplane designed to carry 164 passengers with eight seats in business class and 156 in economy class. Every new airplane has a simple seating plan with a new design of seats and interior in bright tones. The aircraft have roomier compartments for carry-on luggage, creating additional comfort for passengers while reducing boarding and unboarding times.

Reference information:
Currently about 200 airlines worldwide use more than 3,400 airplanes of the A320 family, which includes the A318, A319, A320 and A321 airliners. Nearly 2,000 airplanes of the A320 series—the leader of the A320 family—have been manufactured. More than 6,100 orders for A320 airplanes have been received.

Thanks to their numerous merits, these airliners quickly acquired a reputation of an aircraft with a high level of comfort for short and medium-range flights.