Ryanair Boeing 737 MAX routes

Since Ryanair announced their acquisition of the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft I've blogged about their seat plan (which is quite different to their standard 737), and their first revenue flight.

I've flown Ryanair quite a few times since they introduced the MAX, but I've never flown on the new type, so I thought it would be interesting to see where they are using it.

According to Airfleets.net Ryanair currently have 11 of the MAX aircraft in their fleet: HEN, HEZ, HGG, HGP, HAT, HAW, HAY, HAX, HGT, HGO and HGR.

For today's analysis I've simply used the last 7 days of data for each aircraft from FlightRadar24 - here is EI-HEZ for example

The last 7 days may not be typical for the season - but should give us some idea of what the newbies are up to.

The 11 aircraft flew a total of 166 sectors in the past 7 days - so the first point is that considering the size of Ryanair, your chance of getting a MAX is pretty small.

All the aircraft are based in London Stansted, and whilst Ryanair fly plenty of W routings with their standard B737s, of these 83 return flights just two were on non Stansted routes (a Dublin-Salzburg return, and an Eindhoven-Lisbon trip).

So if you want to fly on the MAX, you really need to fly in or out of London Stansted.

Next up is figure out which route they're most likely to be flow on from Stansted - and here it gets tricky.

17 routes from Stansted had just a single MAX flight in the past 7 days: Bari (BRI), Brno (BRQ), Bucharest (OTP), Bydgoszcz (BZG), Copenhagen (CPH), Cork (ORK), Eindhoven (EIN), Faro (FAO), Gothenburg (GOT), Helsinki (HEL), Katowice (KTW), Luqa (MLA), Milan (BGY), Nantes (NTE), Plovdiv (PDV), Valencia (VLC) and Vilnius (VNO)

Another 8 routes had just two MAX flights in the past 7 days: Alicante (ALC), Cagliari (CAG), Dublin (DUB), Fuerteventura (FUE), Gran Canaria (LPA), Malaga (AGP), Salzburg (SZG) and Stockholm (ARN)

A further 5 routes had three MAX flights in the past 7 days: Lanzarote (ACE), Milan (MXP), Riga (RIX), Thessaloniki (SKG) and Treviso (TSF)

That leaves just 7 routes with four or more MAX flights in the past 7 days.

Athens (ATH), Pafos (PFO), Palermo (PMO) and Rome (CIA) - each had four flights

Sofia (SOF) and Tenerife (TFS) - both had five flights

But the winner with 6 return flights in the past 7 days is Lisbon

Looking at the Lisbon - Stansted route in detail:

FR1882/3 has been flown by a MAX in 4 out of the last 7 days

FR1884/5 has been flown by a MAX in 2 out of the last 7 days

With 38 different airports receiving Ryanair Boeing 737 MAX flights in the past 7 days, it looks like the airline is trying it out across the network.  So it's very hard to book a particular flight with anything like a decent chance of flying on the new plane.

Your best chance (but still barely over 50/50) is on the evening Stansted - Lisbon sector.

Good luck!

 

Ryanair Boeing 737 Max 8200 - first revenue flight

Over two years ago I wrote about seating on Ryanair's Boeing 737 Max, as it was due to operate various routes later that Summer

After the tragic accidents in Indonesia and Ethiopia, the first Ryanair plane finally arrived last month - seen here poking out of a hangar at Dublin Airport

Today the second aircraft operates its first revenue flights - a round trip from London Stansted to Dublin

Surprisingly the plane isn't showing as operating the same flights in the coming week - so Ryanair may just substitute it in at the last moment.  With the Max having an extra 8 seats over the standard Ryanair Boeing 737-800 it should be easy enough to swap it in with minimal passenger seating changes.

Whilst Ryanair's boss Michael O'Leary said recently that passengers can avoid the Max and take the next flight (at least for the first 4 to 6 months of operation), that promise isn't the same as before the pandemic.  If you turned up at Stansted for this morning's 6.30am flight and decided not to fly on the Max, you will be waiting until 10.15pm this evening for the airline's next flight to Dublin.

If you do find yourself on a Ryanair Max aeroplane, it's worth looking at my full post on the seat plan, as you could get yourself a (slightly) better seat for the same price as a standard seat.

Ryanair Boeing 737 Max seatmap

With the addition of the B737 Max aircraft to the Ryanair timetable, using a dummy booking we can seat what the layout will be for the latest additions to their fleet.

Ryanair had previously announced that the planes would have 197 seats - 8 more than their current B737-800 fleet, but hadn't said what the layout would be.

At the front of the plane, seat 1A has been removed - which I'm guessing is due to the curvature of the plane.  Since the seating will start further forward than on the current aircraft, there presumably isn't room for a full three seats.

In the centre of the aircraft the layout is a straightforward two rows of overwing exit seats.

The back of the plane is where things get really interesting - we already knew that an additional exit had to be installed to meet safety requirements.  Seat 27F has been removed - presumably because a cabin crew member will sit there in a backward facing seat.  This means that seats 27D and 27E become the most desirable on the aeroplane, since you will only have a neighbour for take off and landing - and Ryanair aren't (currently) charging a premium for this pair of seats.

The plane comprises 34 rows in total (no row 13) - one row of 2 seats, one row of 5 seats, one row of 4 seats and 31 rows of 6 seats.

As these 197 seat aircraft come into service, it will be interesting to see what happens when there is a problem and the replacement aircraft is one of the older 189 seat B737s. I'm guessing Ryanair will be hoping that if the original flight is full, eight passengers will choose not to fly ... or they will just offload them, and maybe send them by bus instead !