Review: airBaltic Airbus A220 (SAS Wet Lease)

I have flown AirBaltic's A220 in economy and business. My reviews can be found on Airline Reporter.

You schould have got a box of chocolates also

As a Scandinavian, I can say that pronouncing SAS as a word rather than as three letters is quite common, also among the SAS crews. A bit random what people do.

Cool!

"Sass" sound much cleverer than and nowhere near as boring as S-A-S.

Flew the airBaltic A220 on wet lease by SAS back in May. Also in Plus. The crew on that Amsterdam bound flight was excellent, and I had pretty much the best experience I’ve ever had on a narrow body, not that I’ve flown that many wide bodies. Bags were late, but that is par for the course at Schiphol nowadays. Otherwise no complaints, other than lack of power that is.

@BenSchlappig The reason the American and Delta aircraft were boarding from remote stands is that ATH can only handle five widebodies at jetbridge extra-schengen gates at a time. TK1846 (77W) usually gets a jetbridge and that leaves around 10:30, whilst QR203 (usually 77W or 788) arrives a little later and that always gets a jetbridge. The double daily Air Canada 777s usually also get jetbridges, but delays sometimes mess up the pattern. From the photo I could see DL202 (339 from JFK), DL222 (333 from ATL), UA124 (781 from EWR) and UA982 (788 from IAD) were parked at jetbridges leaving no space for DL 212 (333 JFK-ATH and returning ATH-BOS) and AA333 (772 from JFK), which had to go to remote stands. The morning rush from the States and Canada really leaves not enough room for the widebodies at the apron!

I flew Air Baltic with my wife on 2.7.22 HEL-RIX, RIX-BCN and back on 12.7.22. The return flight from BCN was operated by Air Horizont 737-400 which was 30 years old! So it's interesting that they wet lease aircraft to other airlines while they don't have enough planes for their own routes.
When compared to 30 year old 734 the A220 wins handily even if it has no WiFi or power available. This was our first time with them so the spacious seat pitch was a nice surprise.

Thank you for the review.
Tbh I find it funny that Air Baltic is leasing out their own aircrafts, whereas if people buy tickets to fly with Air Baltic, they get some old Maltese aircrafts....

My Swedish friends say "Sass". They corrected me when I said "S-A-S".

I also flew the HEL-RIX leg recently and it was operated by a 30 year old Fokker 100 (!) wet leased from Romania.

The aircraft had definitely seen better days but that was a rare experience nowadays. The crew handed out 10 EUR vouchers as compensation for the downgrade.

They are also leasing a 737-900 from Ukraine International.

I recently flew on airBaltic three times - twice directly with them and once through a partnership with Lufthansa. - full review on my blog (0504Traveller.blogspot.com)

As you said, the A220 is nice for a short, regional flight. Most of my flights were an hour or so with the longest at 2.5hrs. At that point, the seat did become a bit uncomfortable.

The delayed arrival and service of the plane as well as the average customer service is what I also experienced in all 3 flights - every flight was delayed and no notice was given by the gate agent (only got an email from airBaltic 20 minutes after the delay); and the crew was average at best.

as you said, there is NOTHING to do on the plane - no wifi, no streaming, nothing unless you bring your own entertainment. as i said, a good plane for regional, short flights.

You miss a very important point that changes everything. There is only one rear toilet in this Air Baltic's 220. That sucks for any medium range flight. I been there and is a nightmare with a lengthy queues the whole flight.from the mid to the back end rear.

The latvians are a nice and quiet bunch that historically 've lived abuses from soviets, germans, swedish and you name it. Therefore they witness silently how their taxes are expend in this so called national airline who serves the interests of many but no the latvians. They lease their brand new planes to first class airlines such as SAS and then go and lease from other lower reputation airlines so the poor Latvians flying on a 90s fokker while their germans counterparts enjoy the perks of these brand news 220s. Not a very clear business model to be honest

Don’t you think the seats aren’t very comfortable.. especially if you were going on a longer flight??

Just flew twice on this nice plane with AirBaltic. Also like the fresh looking cabin of AirBaltic