Earlier James wrote about how the Bombardier CSeries aircraft is being rebranded as the Airbus A220. Airbus has bought a majority stake in the CSeries program, and that change was finalized just over a week ago. So as a first step, they’re rebranding this as part of the Airbus product line.
Continue reading: JetBlue Orders 60+ Airbus A220s, Plans Big Fleet Refresh
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Just love how Boeing made a whole uproar about this and all it's done is play to Airbus' advantage.
What is it with Aemrican Aviation companies and complaining about unfair government funding when they get just as much or even more?
The increase in size is just following current trend. At one point the a319 was hugely popular and now has less orders than the a318 had.
More airlines are moving to the slightly larger varients of aircraft so I do think this is intended as a direct replacement of the E-jets.
@ Lucky - think we'll ever hear more about Jetblue trying to enter the trans-Atlantic market? This plane couldn't do it but the A321-neo should be able to do the hop to London.
A220 fits their replacement schedule better than whenever Embraer does their refresh. Wonder if those deferred 190 orders get cancelled now.
Also many of those planes are on the northeast commuter corridor. Gates are harder to get , pilots are harder to get, and also those perminter restrictions are being lengthened or removed, yet may not be feasible from $ or noise/size restriction to allow a 320. Goldilocks planes.
And the US wants a larger trade war with Canada? You can keep your bloated Boeing......I'll enjoy all this oil up here, thank you very much
Airbus today said that it's aiming to 'streamline' the cockpit with that of the A320 so that pilots don't need an extra type certification for the A220. This is a huge plus that will certainly convince more A320 customers to order this plane.
I've only heard nice things about this plane. I wonder if because of range Jetblue will install a few Mint seats in a some of these planes.
@Ah
The A220-300 (ok i'll still call it the CS300) can do a transatlantic hop with a full cabin of 130pax. That was revealed some time last year.
So, JetBlue´s hub is BOS and as they tend to be on the lower end of seatcount with their spacious layout anyways, who knows how far these jets can travel with that? Even if it´s "only" 3,300mi that would be enough for BOS-DUB, BOS-MAN and BOS-LHR within reach. A number of other interesting destinations like MAD or CDG are awfully close to that. Who knows, maybe some of this has been at play?
@Flieger - that would be nice especially since the seats in the A220 can be 19” wide which almost makes them almost PE-like especially in EMS rows. I still say they’ll Use the A321LR so they can offer Mint. Maybe they’ll add another 2 row section of Mint and go with 22 seats for transatlantic flights.
I hope they don’t “densify” the A220 as much as the A320 update. The 32” seat pitch in the E190 was decent but not so much in the A320. Same goes for EMS seats.
With the upgrade to the A320 order to A321s, I wonder if the A220 will replace some older A320’s?
I was just looking into the possibility of mint seats fitting into an A220, and instead came across this:
http://www.flyody.com/about.aspx
A startup airline that plans to use the A220 to launch long-haul flights from London City, with all lie-flat seats. Supposedly they’ve already ordered 40 of them.
I don’t know how realistic any of that is, but given your interest in Aura I thought I’d share it.
@Lucky don’t forget that Air Canada also has a large order for the CS300 as a replacement for their outgoing E190s, which ironically Boeing agreed to buy from AC in return for choosing the Max over the NEO as their A319/320 replacement.
Understandable. These planes are vastly superior to the noisy and uncomfortable Boeings
This is nice that JB is doing this, but I refuse to fly them until they fix their OTP. It is absolutely abysmal and has left me stranded many times. Yes, new planes will be nice, but I don't expect any of this to fix the carriers largest issue that is tanking them in an industry they are already being squeezed in numerous ways.
Also, I see this as a first step of reducing their leg room. I will be curious to see if they maintain their extra legroom and continue to advertise this, or if they continue to align with the legacy carriers.
Jetblue gets two thumbs down for me.
I dunno, Delta and even Alaska have stranded me way more than JetBlue, and Delta's downright unpleasant.
Ben,
I can't agree with logic along the lines of "if we can carry 50 more seats for the same fuel burn, we may as well."
Of course that plan works out well if it is safe to assume that all of those seats will be consistently sold. But for a lot of the current E190 routes, that can't be assumed. If it could be, B6 would have just placed the A320 on all those routes and would have forgone the E190 altogether. The E190 is used because it is the right size for the markets it serves, and/or allows B6 to have the number of frequencies that it wants for a given route.
Even if flying a A220 with 50 empty seats results in the same fuel burn as a full E190, it's still going to have higher landing fees since it is a bigger plane, along with higher crew costs, and likely higher maintenance costs (especially for maintenance on those fancy newfangled GTF engines), and depressed ticket yields as a result of B6 struggling to fill up the plane. As you know, on short hops, the fuel burn advantage of the A220 will be less than the figures currently being touted, since the bulk of the efficiency gains from these modern new engines occur at cruising altitude. When half of a given flight is consumed by ascent and descent, the fuel efficiency advantage of the A220 is lessened. I'm sure there's a bunch of other stuff that I'm missing, but the bottom line is that airlines don't want to risk flying with too many empty seats regardless of how efficient the plane is.
My take is that at least some of this order will end up being converted to the smaller A220 variant, which is closer to a direct replacement of the E190 in terms of capacity. The majority of the A220-300's will be used to open up new routes and replace the less efficient but similarly-sized A320, particularly on longer routes. B6's A320 fleet is far and away the oldest subfleet that B6 has, and roughly 35 of their A320's will be over 20 years old by the time bulk A220 deliveries start for B6 in 2023.
Saying " In terms of capacity it’s similar to the A320, which has a capacity of 150 (though that will eventually be increased to 162)." has totally confused me.
The A320 has a capacity far in excess of 150. And 162.
I certainly hope this trend motivates JetBlue’s transatlantic prospects. Heck I once wrote to Jblu on their “recommend a destination” page to establish a hub in Tbilisi. The 321LR could make everything from Seoul to Lisbon (and then on to the east coast). TBS is a regional transit hub waiting to happen imo!
Mint cabins will fit on these new aircrafts or will only fit them with economy seats.
@ George Anderson -- It hasn't been revealed yet, but I would expect they'll just have economy.
Bloomberg: JetBlue Got Discount of Up to 72% on Airbus A220s, Moody's Says.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-13/jetblue-got-discount-of-up-to-72-on-airbus-a220s-moody-s-says
Heck of a deal even by usual discounts off list.
Are all these to be for Jet Blue? I understand Breeze (jet blue being parent company) had ordered the same planes. And I think the same total amount listed in this article.