Air Arabia expects whole fleet to be back in service by March 2022

Air Arabia Group expects to return all its aircraft to service by March 2022 as it looks forward to eventually extending its reach with larger Airbus narrowbodies. CE Adel Ali says the budget operator’s product is strongly matched to the demands of passengers as the travel industry emerges from the Covid-19 crisis. “People want to fly non-stop to their home city and they don’t want to sit for too long on an aeroplane,” he suggests. With Air Arabia’s focus being on “flying to as many destinations as possible” using narrowbody jets, Ali’s attitude towards the airline’s post-Covid strategy is to “do what you have done [pre-Covid], because it’s working”. The near-term plan is to bring all of the airline’s current fleet back into service over the coming months – a milestone Ali says should be reached in March 2022, “subject to Covid not giving us more surprises”. After that, the growth potential will eventually come from incoming aircraft. Air Arabia ordered 120 A320-family jets at 2019’s Dubai air show, comprising 73 A320neos, 27 A321LRs and 20 A321XLRs. Ali says the group is sticking with the pre-Covid plan to start taking deliveries from 2024. Some 40% of those jets are for “fleet replenishment”, Ali says, while the rest will be for growth.<br/>