LOT Polish Airlines (LO, Warsaw Chopin) has unveiled its narrowbody fleeting plan with up to fifteen B737s to join its fleet during the course of 2017 and beyond.
The Polish carrier said in a statement that it had agreed to lease four B737-800s from AerCap with deliveries to begin from April of next year onwards. It also has the option to convert the type to MAX variants should the need arise.
In tandem to that agreement, it has also agreed to lease six B737 MAX 8s from Air Lease Corporation with options for an additional five of the type. The first B737 MAX 8 will arrive in November 2017 with the second arriving a month later.
With the lifting of EC-imposed network and capacity growth restrictions in January this year, LOT has set about trying to recapture market share it has lost not only internationally, but also locally and regionally.
"Although we are getting the new B737 MAX 8 in record time, we need additional aircraft that we can use as early as the coming summer season," CEO Rafal Milczarski said. "Thanks to the attractive lease terms we got on the four second-hand B737-800s, we can quickly make up for lost time, increasing our offering on some of our most popular routes while opening up new connections, such as Central Asia."
At present, LOT employs an eclectic mix of aircraft including three B737-400s, six B787-8s, ten Dash 8-400s, six E170s, fourteen E175s, and six E195s. To supplement this summer's fleet, it leased a Fokker 100 from Romania's Carpatair (V3, Timisoara).
Last month, Milczarski said the carrier's revised longterm plan would see it operating a fleet of seventy aircraft, inclusive of sixteen B787s, by 2020.
