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!
