(Bloomberg) --

Ryanair Holdings Plc Chief Executive Officer Michael O’Leary said the European discount giant is in talks with Boeing Co. about a follow-on order for the U.S. manufacturer’s grounded Max model.

While the Max has been idled worldwide for close to a year after two fatal crashes, Ryanair is in “active discussions” to buy more of the narrow-body planes, O’Leary said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in Brussels.

Ryanair already has orders for 210 Max 200 planes, a high-capacity variant of the baseline Max 8 model. O’Leary said the talks concern more of those aircraft as well as a batch of bigger Max 10s to satisfy the carrier’s fleet requirements from 2024 through 2028.

O’Leary didn’t rule out buying jets from Airbus SE but said the European company would need to cut its prices and come up with more-attractive delivery slots.

He said that while U.S. carriers may begin operating the Max again in June and July he’s doubtful that the plane will return to service in Europe before the end of the summer. Ryanair expects to get its first aircraft in September and October, partly reflecting the need for the Max 200 to clear separate certification hurdles.

O’Leary was appearing at the Airlines for Europe 2020 aviation summit in the Belgian capital.

To contact the reporters on this story: Guy Johnson in London at gjohnson87@bloomberg.net;Siddharth Philip in London at sphilip3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Palazzo at apalazzo@bloomberg.net, Christopher Jasper

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