AirAsia has agreed to wet-lease two Airbus A330-300s from Indonesia AirAsia X (IAAX).

In a Malaysian stock exchange, AirAsia says it will wet-lease PK-XRA (MSN 716) from 16 September till 15 March 2017 for a contract value of $9.8 million, and PK-XRC (654) from 1 October until 30 November at a contract value of $3.1 million.

Both transactions were done at an arm’s length basis, after taking into account the previous wet-lease agreement AirAsia had with AirAsia X, as well as market quoted rates.

The wet-lease of IAAX’s two A330s will allow AirAsia to rationalise its network through frequency reduction, while also reducing its own crew requirement. It will also enable AirAsia to overcome slot constraints at select airports, provide additional capacity where required, and better manage its network, it adds.

IAAX had recently ceased operating long-haul services from Denpasar to Melbourne and Sydney, citing a network restructuring. It had also previously operated flights between Jakarta and Jeddah, but FlightGlobal schedules data indicates that this is no longer the case.

The airline now operates five domestic and five international short-haul services.

Source: Cirium Dashboard