Spanish low-cost air carrier Volotea (V7/VOE) operated the last flight with a Boeing 717-200 (in the pictures) on Sunday, January 11th. The last flights that day were operated in Italy on domestic routes. Volotea operated up to 19 aircraft of this type on its routes, also to Croatia on numerous routes to Dubrovnik (in the pictures) and Split. In addition to Volotea, Finnish air carrier Blue1 (KF/KFB) also operated flights to Split, Dubrovnik and Pula with these planes previously.
Volotea was the last air carrier in Europe to use these aircraft. The last 9 planes will fly to the US these days. In the rest of the world, Boeing 717 is operated only by US air carriers Delta (DL/DAL) and Hawaiian Airlines (HA/HAL) as well as Qantas (QF/QFA) on regional routes in Australia. Voltea will continue to operate only Airbus A319s. All routes to Dubrovnik and Split are currently offered in Volotea bookings with the same number of flights as in 2019, including the new routes announced for last year, which didn’t start with operations for well-known reasons. However, Volotea doesn’t offer any flights to Pula and Rijeka at the moment.
The Boeing 717-200 was an aircraft that was originally named as McDonnell Douglas MD-95. When Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas manufacturer, they had not yet begun deliveries of these aircraft. Since orders had already been agreed, Boeing built these planes under its own name, Boeing 717, and delivered them. Boeing had no intention to gain more orders for new customers for this type of aircraft, so production ended in 2006 with 156 units produced.
