It’s an interesting time for Greece’s Aegean Airlines, as the airline has plans to start flying (sort of) long haul. However, unfortunately we’re going to have to wait longer than expected for that to happen at the Star Alliance carrier, though I’m not sure the airline is sharing the full story.
Continue reading: Aegean Scraps Airbus A321XLR Plans Over Seat Certification Issues
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Airbus would have been wise to have obtained certification of a few off-the-shelf seats and cabin configurations.
How is it that jetBlue can handle this, but DL, AA (those freakin' doors), now Aegean, can't?
At this point, ditch Aegean, bring back Olympic! Opa!
I was looking forward to flying them to India as part of a larger trip, but think this is good news. Aegean have always been taking a rather risk-averse approach to expansion and it's always worked for them. As a result of the Middle East situation, they'll likely have more planes available around Europe during the summer and their primary focus will be sorting out their utilisation. Once they have a clearer picture around the conflict, oil prices, global economic consequences etc, they'll be able to reassess the business case for long haul planes.
Indeed Aegean is ordering an additional 2 A321 LR for a total of 6 planes. Aegean also talked about it being better to have a common fleet of 6 A321LR instead of 4 & 2XLR.
Aegean is a well run, profitable airline. Olympic was never any of those things.
These seat certification woes have been persisting since September… I suspect another factor was that JetBlue’s configuration wouldn’t have made economic sense for the India market, with so few economy seats and so many business class seats. Another factor, and this I know from personal experience as I was recently working as a flight attendant there, is that there are major crew shortages, especially in the cabin, and the company wouldn’t have been able to operate the India flights without compromising its summer schedule.
Aegean could've used the XLR for ATH-BOS and added a JetBlue code share since they'd have the configuration for the familiar Mint product.
I know JetBlue didn't want the XLRs since they didn't want an orphan fleet of two planes, but it seems like it would've been worth it to get it back from Aegean if the JetBlue seat config was already installed
If they still deploying the A321LRs, can please choose a destination other than India?
It’s back on? My CDG-ATH Aegean flight July 16 is confirmed in an A321XLR aircraft