Air France will add three new Airbus A350-900 widebody aircraft to its fleet after Air Lease Corporation announced a new deal between the two aviation companies.

On March 6, 2023, Air Lease Corporation, which is based in Los Angeles, confirmed the Airbus long-term lease placements will start in the second quarter of 2024 when the aircraft are delivered.

“This strategic lease placement of three new A350-900s is another important step in the long-haul fleet modernization of Air France,” said Steven Udvar-Házy, executive chairman of Air Lease Corporation. “The Air France-KLM Group is our largest European airline leasing customer, encompassing not only Air France and KLM, but also includes Transavia Netherlands and Transavia France.”

Air Lease Corporation will also deliver nine new Airbus A321neo aircraft to the Air-France-KLM Group between late 2023 and 2026, and five Boeing 737s for Transavia during the first half of this year, all on long-term leases

Air France-KLM Group’s fleet expansion comes a few weeks after the airline presented its consolidated 2022 full year results, which showed a combined revenue of €26.4B and a net income of €0.7B.

Capacity is back to 85% of that of 2019, the last pre-COVID year, and load factor is at 84%.

Altogether, the airlines of the Air France-KLM group, also including the low-cost carrier Transavia, carried more than 83 million passengers last year. This is almost double the total for the previous year, when the impact of the COVID pandemic was still being felt.

Air Lease Corporation is principally engaged in purchasing new commercial aircraft and leasing them to worldwide airline customers.