On January 25, 2024, Royal Jordanian Airlines took delivery of its first two Embraer E195-E2s leased from Azorra. The two aircraft are the first to wear the airline’s new livery.
Continue reading to learn more.
Royal Jordanian’s Embraer E-Jet E2 Family Order
On May 18, 2023, Embraer announced that Royal Jordanian Airlines would be adding eight E-Jet E2 family aircraft including four E190-E2s and four E195E2s to its fleet, with deliveries planned to start in 2023’s fourth quarter.
While Royal Jordanian ordered two of the E195E2s directly, the remaining six aircraft were ordered through Azorra, a leasing company that already had an existing backlog with Embraer at the time. The two direct orders were first listed in Embraer’s Q4 2022 backlog as being from an undisclosed customer.
Royal Jordanian chose the E-Jet E2 for, among other reasons, a degree of commonality with its existing fleet of E175s and E190s from the original E-Jet family.
When announcing the order, Royal Jordanian’s Vice Chairman and CEO Samer Majali noted “RJ has been operating Embraer aircraft for 15 years, and the E2 reduces the investment cost of pilot training and spare parts provisioning significantly, whilst also lowering crew scheduling and maintenance costs.”
Both the Royal Jordanian E190-E2 and E195-E2 will be equipped with 12 business class seats. The E190-E2 will additionally have 80 economy class seats for a total capacity of 92 passengers. The larger E195-E2 will have 108 economy class seats for a total capacity of 120.
The aircraft will be equipped with onboard wi-fi.
Royal Jordanian’s First Two E195-E2s Ferried to Amman
While Royal Jordanian was originally expecting to take delivery of its first E-Jet E2 family aircraft in Q4 2023, the airline ended up taking delivery of the first two E195-E2 on January 25, 2024. The first two are airframes leased from Azorra and are the first aircraft to wear the airline’s new livery.
Both of the aircraft, registered JY-REA and JY-REB, were ferried from Recife in Brazil to their new home in Amman via Spain’s Canary Island’s Gran Canaria, with the first leg of the almost 6,000-mile delivery flight taking about five hours and the second leg about seven hours.
The second airframe, JY-REB, took off from Recife at 1:44PM on January 24, 2024, and landed in Amman at 12:05PM on January 25, 2024. The first airframe, JY-REA, followed about ten minutes later.
Over time, Royal Jordanian is expected to put the E195-E2s on flights within the Middle East, to North Africa, and to Europe. Aeroroutes reported that the aircraft is scheduled to first make an appearance on the Amman – Baghdad route on February 1, 2024. The smaller E190-E2 is expected to enter into service in May 2024 according to the same report.
Summary
Royal Jordanian is one of the few customers of the Embraer E-Jet E2 family. The airline is planning to add a total of eight airframes to its fleet split equally between the E190-E2 and the larger E195-E2.
Earlier this week, the airline took delivery of the first two airframes from the order, both E195-E2s. The aircraft, wearing Royal Jordanian’s new livery, were flown from Recife in Brazil to Amman and are expected to enter into service shortly.
