Volotea phases-out B717

On 10 January, Volotea has officially phased-out the B717 and their final seven planes flew to Venice on this day for temporary storage. In the coming weeks they will be ferried to Victorville (CA) for further storage. Following the retirement of its B717s, Volotea has now become an all Airbus A319-operator, having twenty of them in the fleet with three more to join in the coming months.

Volotea was founded in 2011 by the former founders of Vueling and launched operations in March 2012. It planned to, mainly, operate flights from less served airports in countries surrounding the Mediterranean. The airline studied the use of the Bombardier CRJ1000 and Embraer ERJ195 for its flights, but eventually chose the Boeing B717 after receiving a good deal from Boeing Capital on former AirTran B717s which were surplus after the merged into Southwest. Over the years the airline operated 19 different B717s.

The retirement of the B717 by Volotea also means the retirement of the type in Europe. Over the years just a handful of airlines in Europe operated the type, which was originally launched by McDonnell-Douglas as the MD-95, but renamed to the B717-200 when Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas merged in 1997. In Europe it saw action with Blue1, Olympic, Quantum Air (formerly known as AeBal), Spanair and, of course, Volotea.

Worldwide there are now only three airlines left that operate the B717s. These are Delta Air Lines (85 aircraft), Hawaiian Airlines (nineteen aircraft) and QantasLink (twenty planes). Of these three, Delta has announced it will retire their B717s within the coming four years.

In total 156 B717-200s have been produced between 1998 and 2006 at Boeing's Long Beach-plant in California.

Photo by Juhani Sipilä, kindly provided by AirHistory.net