Into the wild Virgin Blue yonder

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, May 11, 2006

Virgin Blue is set to add nine 737s between 2008 and 2010, MarketWatch reports. http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?dist=newsfinder&siteid=google&guid=%7BE7D496BA-4E7A-4B90-8043-A345135FFB94%7D&keyword=

Key Quote: “Chief Executive Brett Godfrey made the announcement while briefing the market on the company’s first half results, and said the new ‘next generation’ aircraft would replace planes currently being operated under leases.”

Such a deal would be worth close to $600 million at Boeing’s newly announced list prices. Analysts say the company’s been discounting 737 orders between 30 and 33 percent, on average.

The order hasn’t been formally announced and isn’t showing up yet on Boeing’s orders-and-deliveries Web site. http://active.boeing.com/commercial/orders/index.cfm But I really like Virgin Blue’s livery and figured this was a good chance to get a pretty airplane picture posted here.