Ryanair, the Irish low-cost airline, said that it had bought a further 27 Boeing 737-800 aircraft, which are worth $1.9 billion (£960 million) at list prices. The aircraft are scheduled for delivery between September 2009 and March 2010. Ryanair has 137 737s in service and another 171 on order.

Discounts on aircraft are common, but Howard Millar, the chief financial officer of Ryanair, and Boeing officials declined to say what the airline would pay for each 737, which carries a sticker price of up to $75 million.

The aircraft are powered by a pair of CFM567 engines that are produced by the Franco-American joint venture CFM International.

The airliners are also fitted with blended winglets, which Boeing says reduce fuel burn by 4 per cent on trips that exceed 1,000 nautical miles.

“There’s plenty of headroom for growth in Europe,” Mr Millar said when asked about April traffic figures, which indicated that adding aircraft to the fleet had dented the airline’s load factor, which fell to 83 per cent from 85 per cent for the same month a year earlier.

Ryanair, which will report annual results next week, carried 42.5 million passengers in the year to March 31. Mr Millar said that any move into long-range routes, such as flights to the United States, was “some way off”. (Reuters)

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