CYPRUS Airways (CY) will take delivery of its first ever 295-seater Airbus A330 next Thursday, the airline said yesterday.
The A330, will be flown from the Airbus plant in Toulouse, France, with Airbus instructors aboard, who will continue to fly with CY pilots for the first month after the aircraft goes into service.
The national carrier’s second A330 is expected to be delivered around April next year. The two larger planes will replace CY’s fleet of four 240-seater A310s, which have been sold to the same company the airline is leasing the A330s from.
CY spokesman Tassos Angelis said the new A330’s inaugural flight would be to London on or around December 23. In the meantime, he said, the company’s pilots would undergo training on the new aircraft. One team of pilots has already undergone six weeks of training in Toulouse. The A330s will be used on long-haul flights, mainly to the UK.
CY recently took delivery of two new Airbus A319s, which has 126 seats, and is used for shorter-haul flights to Greece, Europe and the Middle East.
The national carrier’s charter arm Eurocypria is acquiring four Boeing 737s with 189 seats each at the beginning of next year, on long-term contracts. The Airbuses currently leased by CY to Eurocypria will then be returned to the national carrier.
The completion of the addition of new planes will bring the fleet’s total 16 aircraft, and is expected to cover the company’s needs for the next five years at least.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
