Aeroitalia, Italy’s newest private airline venture, has wet-leased a Boeing 737-700 from Romanian startup HelloJets. The news comes as the company starts up its regular operations in its latest base in Florence, and was first published by Romanian aviation news website BoardingPass.ro.
The aircraft, registered YR-BMR, previously operated for Romanian low-cost carrier Blue Air (it is pictured in the former airline’s colors in this article’s cover). In its last available photograph, -BMR had stickers of TAAG, Angola’s flag carrier, which was supposed to wet lease the aircraft — something that has not happened for now.
While Aeroitalia has a sizeable fleet of Boeing 737-800 — four, with a fifth one to join the fleet soon, according to Planespotters.net –, Florence’s short runway means that most of the 737-800s cannot operate with high payloads in and out of the city. The smaller 737-700 can generally do so more profitably.
According to data by Flightradar24, YR-BMR was ferried to Florence today and was expected to do its first rotation to Heathrow today.
HelloJets currently has a fleet of three Boeing 737s, one of the -500 series, one -700 and another 737-800, the three of which were originally operated by Blue Air.
This is the second time Aeroitalia resorts to wet leasing smaller aircraft: for a number of months now, the Italian airline has wet leased an ATR 72-600 from another Romanian startup, Air Connect.
Aeroitalia has also hired, in October, Blue Air’s former Chief Commercial Officer, Krassimir Tanev, for the same role at the Italian carrier. Since then, the airline’s commercial movements have become more aggressive, with several new routes launched and a very ambitious Summer 2023 program, even clashing with Ryanair in their home turf of Bergamo.
Certified for flights in 2021, Hello Jets was originally founded by Cristian Rada (Blue Air’s majority shareholder until its demise), and in June 2022, the ownership of the company was transfered to a third party, Rams Center SRL, according to BoardingPass.ro.
