TAROM announces the renewal of its ATR fleet

Romanian national carrier TAROM announced this week the signing of the contract for leasing a number of 9 ATR 72-600 planes.

The first four planes are expected to join the fleet of the Bucharest-Otopeni based airline at the latest in mid-february, as the airline announced.

Currently, the Romanian national carrier has in it’s fleet 9 turbo-prop ATR planes (7 ATR-42 and 2 ATR 72). The current planes are said to go to the leasing company that handles the current transaction.

The fleet age of the TAROM’s current ATR planes is close to 19 years, with the first ATR planes being delivered to the Bucharest based carrier back in 1998. With the new planes, the average age of all TAROM’s fleet will significantly be younger.

The Romanian carrier uses the fleet of ATR planes on a mix of both domestic and international regional flights. If you fly on a domestic route from Bucharest, it will most probably be on an ATR plane. You could fly on a jet plane if your flight is to the cities of Timisoara or Cluj-Napoca.

The new planes will grow the number of available bookable seats on TAROM flights, since the new ATR 72-600 that are due to enter TAROM’s fleet have a capacity of 72 seats, while the old ATR 42-500 had a capacity of 48 seats and 68 seats in the case of the two ATR 72-500 planes.