The national airline of the island nation, Maldivian has signed with France’s ATR to acquire three new of the brand’s aircraft.
The airline has decided on increasing its flight capacity in light of several of its old aircraft being grounded for maintenance. It has been reported that the grounded aircraft remain in unfavorable conditions and sufficient repairs on them will take questionably lengthier durations.
In addition to this, the aircraft used by Maldivian currently have become obsolete models since its manufacturer had ceased production of the said models.
Meanwhile, amid the operational setback Maldivian was forced to charter flights from two other domestic airlines; Manta Air and FlyMe in order to adjust the airline’s operations to customer satisfactory levels.
Maldivian decided to acquire newer aircraft in a bid to meet the surging demand for domestic aviation.
ATR had already confirmed that as per the terms of the agreement, all three aircraft will be delivered within 2022, though an exact date of handover had not been disclosed. According to local reports, Maldivian will be purchasing two ATR72-600s and one ATR42-600.
At the time of writing, Maldivian’s fleet consist of ten Dash-8 Twin Otters and two Airbus models.