State-owned carrier Egyptair has agreed to lease six Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners from Dublin-based AerCap.

Leasing the twin-aisle aircraft is part of the carrier’s widebody fleet renewal programme, a Boeing spokesperson said in a statement on 15 November.

In October last year, the leasing arm of Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE) agreed to finance eight of the nine new Boeing 737-800 planes that Egyptair intends to acquire as part of its expansion strategy.

The nine planes are valued at $864m based on list prices.

MEED understands Egyptair’s current fleet comprises a mix of Boeing’s 777 and 737 aircraft.

On 14 November, Egyptair also signed a letter of intent (LoI) with Canada’s Bombardier for the purchase of up to 24 CS300 aircraft.

Once finalised, the order could be worth $1.1bn based on list prices, or up to $2.2bn if the carrier opts to exercise purchase rights for 12 additional CS300s, Bombardier said.

The new planes are expected to help the carrier add new capacity as well as possibly retire old planes.

Egyptair and its subsidiaries Egyptair Express and Egyptair Cargo dominate the local aviation market, but have accumulated losses of EGP10bn ($1.1bn) between 2010 and June 2014.

A restructuring programme has helped significantly reduce losses in recent years but the airline’s goal to become profitable in 2-15-2016 has been hampered by the drop in the number of tourists visiting Egypt in the wake of the terror attack on a Russian airliner departing Sharm el-Sheikh in October 2015 as well as the crash of Egyptair MS804 in May 2016.

It is understood that the number of tourists visiting the county dropped by an estimated 40 per cent in 2016.