PLAY is gearing up to receive its third A321neo later this week. The aircraft, another former Interjet plane, has emerged from the paint shop in Texas, ready to be ferried to Iceland on Thursday. That brings the startup airline’s fleet to three A321neos, giving it the opportunity to bolster capacity for the rest of the summer season.
Three for PLAY
Iceland’s newest airline is gearing up to add more capacity to its fleet this week, as its third A320neo is ready for delivery. The plane was pictured leaving the paint shop in Texas, ahead of its delivery to Iceland on Thursday.
The A321neo will be registered TF-PLB once PLAY takes delivery. It is a 3.3-year-old aircraft, originally delivered to Interjet in 2018 as XA-NEO. Both PLAY’s existing A321neos were former Interjet aircraft too, and all have the same rather generous 192 seat all-economy configuration.
According to data from RadarBox.com, the aircraft was stored in Arizona for much of the previous 12 months. 10 days ago, it was ferried to Amarillo, Texas, for painting. International Aerospace Coatings (IAC) took care of the neo’s new gleaming coat of paint.
The addition of another neo for PLAY will help the airline to ramp up its capacity for the remainder of the summer season. From just 130 flights in July, PLAY will operate 198 in August, keeping things at that level through to October. From November to March, capacity will hover around 160 – 170 flights per month.
Where has PLAY been flying so far?
PLAY launched as a new startup to much fanfare at the end of June. Its inaugural destination was London Stansted, but more connections quickly followed. By the end of July, it had added Tenerife, Copenhagen, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona and Alicante to its route map.
For August, the airline is scheduled to fly to all those destinations but with increased capacity. The airports getting the most PLAY love are Stansted, Copenhagen, Paris and Berlin, all with 18 flights for the month. Barcelona, Tenerife and Alicante stick at around eight or nine flights.
No new destinations are loaded into the schedule until December, when we see it operating a one-off flight to Warsaw, as well as two rotations to Gran Canaria. January sees the addition of Saltsburg, with a couple of rotations a month to start, while Gran Canaria sees increasing numbers of flights as we move into 2022.
Barcelona appears to have been removed from schedules from October onwards. This is likely a seasonal change, with the route expected to return in summer 2022. As yet, no transatlantic flights are loaded in, but we can hope to get more news on that later in the year as PLAY increases its fleet size and lays out its plans for next summer.
Have you tried PLAY yet? Let us know in the comments.
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