BOEING has agreed to sell 70 aircraft to Ryanair, the Irish airline, for $4.6 billion (£2.5 billion) — a discount of more than half the list price of the jets.
Boeing yesterday said that the 737-800, the latest version of its short-haul carrier, was priced at $65 million. However, industry sources indicated that Ryanair had probably agreed to pay between $25 millon and $30 million for each plane.
Steep discounts from the list price are as common for aircraft as they are for airline tickets, but the Irish carrier, renowned for its cheese-paring cost-management, appears to have profited from a sudden fall-off in Boeing’s expected deliveries after 2007.
Howard Millar, Ryanair’s deputy chief executive, said: “Boeing had their order book a little bit empty out in 2008-2011, and we thought it was time to extend our horizons a bit . . . We see it a bit like a free seat, we think it’s a Boeing free-seat sale.”