United Airways adds two new aircraft to its fleet

Courtesy Wikipedia. Image credit: Raihanspotter

Rapidly growing Bangladeshi private carrier United Airways has added two additional aircraft to its fleet. The aircraft are an ATR 72-200 registered as S2-AFU and a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 registered as S2-AEJ. The ATR 72-200 originated with LOT Polish Airlines, and then was transferred to LOT's regional subsidiary Eurolot before being sold to United Airways. Meanwhile, the MD-83 was delivered to US carrier Trans World Airlines (TWA) in 1995, became part of American Airlines' fleet after American acquired TWA in 2001, and then was sold to United Airways earlier this year after being parked in 2012.

The aircraft become the 10th and 11th airplanes in United Airways' fleet, composed of 2x Airbus A310-300s, 3x ATR 72-200s, 5x MD-83s, and 1x Bombardier Dash 8 Q100. The carrier also has 4x BAE Jetstream 31s on order to grow domestic operations, and a further A310-300 on order for longer haul flights.

Chairman and Managing Director of United Airways Capt. Tasbirul Ahmed Choudhury had this to say about the acquisitions:

These new addition of ATR-72 and MD-83 aircraft has increased the fleet strength of United Airways to Eleven. We definitely want to increase our fleet as this is the right time to procure desired aircraft to expand more domestic, regional and international destinations. The ATR-72 aircraft is having 64 economy class seats and the MD-83 aircraft 167 economy class seats.

United Airways serves 15 destinations (7 international) across Asia and the Middle East. It has its primary hub at Dhaka's Shajahlal International Airport.