airBaltic To Grow Airbus A220 Fleet To 100 Jets By 2030

There's nothing wrong with a government-owned airline, as long as the guidance is limited to "Go away and make money"! Does the airline borrow commercially or is it able to use government rates of interest, though, which would give it an advantage over private sector competitors. I'm wondering the same about Ethiopian, which seems to have a similar relationship with its government owner.

Is there no leasing market during the winter months in the southern hemisphere?

1 The airline will have financing at regular market rates due to EU rule for fair competition.
2 The market for wet leasing in the Southern Hemisphere it way too small. Additionally it would be way too bureaucratic to transfer European airplanes & crews there, while shifting within the EU is much more easy.

This is great news. I am a huge fan of airBaltic‘s A220s. Being Munich-based, I regularly find myself on board one of these planes, as airBaltic operates several Lufthansa routes as a wet-lease partner. From a passenger perspective, it‘s like day and night between an airBaltic A220 and any LH plane - seat pitch, seat comfort and padding, the large windows, the bright cabin etc. Always a delight!

While I do agree that Air Baltic is a fascinating carrier, and has an excellent on board experience, I do have to point something out about its consistency, as you highlighted above.

The airline is currently wet-leasing 2 Airbus A319 from a sub-par Romanian charter airline called Carpatair to operate their own flights, while leasing out their new A220 to other carriers. In past summer seasons, they have even wet-leased old Fokker 100's to run on their own flights.

It's certainly not a good look when you're leasing out your own brand-new, state of the art aircraft to other carriers, yet operating your flights with other old, out of date wet-leased aircraft.

I believe that the wet-leasing market in the southern hemisphere is much smaller than in the north. SunExpress is wetleasing a couple of aircraft and crew to SAA in northern winter, which seems to work well. However, I believe that other markets like Australia don't have a similiar volatility in demand compared to Europe.