Allegiant Air will for the first time operate Airbus aircraft beginning in 2013, the company revealed late Sunday night.
The ultra-low-cost carrier says it will lease nine Airbus A319 jets from GE Commercial Aviation Services (GECAS) another 10 A319s from Cebu Pacific Air in the Philippines.
Allegiant said it will eventually purchase the 10 aircraft from Cebu.
“The A319 is a new aircraft type for Allegiant, but we otherwise see this as a continuation of our existing business model,” said Andrew C. Levy, Allegiant President, in a statement. “A319 asset values have significantly declined and now mirror the environment we saw when we first began buying MD-80s.”
The move was not entirely a surprise, as Enterprise, Nevada-based Allegiant had posted a job listing for an Airbus Fleet Manager a couple of months earlier.
It will be interesting to see how many seats Allegiant fits into these planes. The Cebu planes are currently configured with 150 seats in 26 rows. The layout and origin of the GECAS-leased planes was not immediately available.
Allegiant currently operates 58 MD-80s and four Boeing 757-200s. The airline also owns an additional two Boeing 757-200s that are currently being leased to other carriers.
