OREANDA-NEWS. When finalized, deal will allow Ryanair to grow traffic to more than 100 million passengers per annum, and create more than 3,000 new jobs across the airline

Ryanair, Europe’s only ultra-low-cost carrier (ULCC), today (19 Mar) signed an agreement with the Boeing Company to purchase 175 new Next Generation 737-800 airplanes.  When finalised, the deal will be worth nearly USD 15.6 billion at current list prices, and will allow Ryanair to grow its airline to more than 400 airplanes, serving more than 100 million passengers per year across Europe by the end of the delivery stream in 2018. 

The agreement was signed by Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary and Boeing Commercial Airplanes President CEO Ray Conner in New York (19 Mar). Upon approval by Ryanair’s shareholders, the purchase will become Boeing’s largest deal to date in 2013 and will be the largest ever aircraft order from a European airline. It will sustain thousands of skilled manufacturing jobs in Boeing and its supplier companies and will represent the largest ever capital investment by an Irish company in U.S. manufacturing and U.S. jobs.

These Boeing airplanes will create more than 3,000 new jobs for pilots, cabin crew and engineers at Ryanair’s growing number of aircraft bases across Europe. Approximately 75 of these new aircraft will replace some of Ryanair’s existing fleet of 305 Boeing 737s, but the remainder will drive new growth of  Ryanair’s fleet of young, highly efficient airplanes. These airplanes will allow Ryanair to grow its low-cost airline service by about 5 percent per annum over the next several years, taking Ryanair’s traffic to over 100 million passengers by March 2019.

As Ryanair continues to plan its future as Europe’s low-cost airline leader, it continues to evaluate the benefits of Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft which enters service in 2017.