Boeing, Ryanair Launch 737 Max 200

by  GREGORY POLEK

Ryanair's 737 Max 200s will carry as many as 197 passengers in a 30-inch seat pitch. (Image: Boeing)

September 8, 2014, 11:44 AM

Boeing finally answered Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary’s call for a higher-capacity 737 Max 8 with last Monday morning’s official launch of the 737 Max 200 and, in the process, won a commitment for as many as 200 airplanes. The commitment calls for a firm order for 100 airplanes and options for another 100, together worth as much as $22 billion. The Irish low-fare airline expects to take delivery of its first 100 Max 200s from 2019 through 2023.

Plans call for Ryanair’s airplanes to come in a single-class, 197-seat interior configuration, meaning they will hold eight more passengers than Boeing designed the standard Max 8 to carry. Boeing’s new design allows for as many as 200 seats by incorporating a mid-exit door to increase the exit limit, giving the airplane the potential to offer 20-percent better operating cost efficiency than the current 737-800NG delivers.

Meeting in New York on Monday with Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Ray Conner, O’Leary quoted estimates that, apart from the fuel savings benefits the Max promises to deliver over the NG, the eight extra seats could generate $1 million per aircraft a year in additional revenue for Ryanair.

“I feel like a child who’s woken up on Christmas morning, unwrapping his presents and finding that Santa Claus has given him exactly what he asked for,” said O’Leary. “We’ve been pushing Boeing and, to a lesser extent, Airbus for the last ten years to try to get close to 200 seats into the Boeing 737-800 series aircraft. Two hundred seats is the sweet spot we believe in the short-haul market.”

O’Leary noted that the removal of unneeded front and rear galley space and the repositioning of lavatory space to the rear of the airplane means Ryanair’s 197-seat Max 200s will allow more leg room than the airline’s current 800NGs now offer. Seat pitch, he said, will expand to slightly more than 30 inches. “Some of the toilets are moving into where the rear galley is now,” he explained.

Following the press conference in New York, Conner and O’Leary planned to travel to Seattle to celebrate first delivery of Ryanair’s next batch of 180 Boeing 737-800s, 175 of which it ordered in March 2013. Now flying 300 of the narrowbodies, Ryanair plans to increase the size of its fleet to 520 Boeing jets over the next decade, said O’Leary. Schedules call for delivery of the 180 NGs into 2019.