By Allison Lampert<\/p>\n
MIRABEL, Quebec, May 6 (Reuters) – Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia announced on Wednesday a firm order of 150 Airbus A220 jets manufactured in Canada, with 150 options to purchase a larger version of the jet if Airbus \u200cmakes it.<\/p>\n
The announcement was made at an event near Montreal.<\/p>\n
In January, Reuters reported that Airbus would start offering a larger version \u200cof the plane, called an A220-500, to airlines and leasing firms. AirAsia’s option to buy the larger plane does not involve the same level of commitment as \u200bits firm order of 150 A220s, which requires a deposit.<\/p>\n
AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes said in an interview he believes Airbus will produce the larger version of the jet with 180 seats that would replace Airbus’s A320 family, leaving the planemaker to focus on its larger A321 jets.<\/p>\n
The plane, designed originally by Canadian planemaker Bombardier , typically seats 110 to 130 passengers.<\/p>\n
“This plane was built to be stretched when Bombardier built it,” said \u200cFernandes, who added he would be the A220-500’s \u2060launch customer.<\/p>\n
Airbus, however, is now trying to ramp up production of its existing A220 jets so it can break even on the money-losing program it essentially took for free from Bombardier in 2018.<\/p>\n
It has \u2060also faced pressure from Embraer’s E2, which won a campaign with Finnair in March, and outsold the Airbus A220 three-to-one last year.<\/p>\n
Airbus commercial aviation CEO Lars Wagner said the European planemaker intends to take a decision on whether to do a larger version this year and that reaction from airline \u200bcustomers is \u200bpositive.<\/p>\n
“It obviously helps if we have a customer like Tony who publicly \u200bsaid he’s going to order another 150,” Wagner said \u200cin an interview. “I see a lot of demand.”<\/p>\n
AirAsia is the “launch customer” of the A220’s new 160-seat cabin configuration.<\/p>\n
The province of Quebec has a minority stake in the A220 program, which is produced at a site in Mirabel, north of Montreal, and at a separate assembly line in Mobile, Alabama. A220 planes for non-U.S. customers are produced in Mirabel.<\/p>\n
Airbus’s decision would come at a time when airlines are trimming flights and raising fears over shortages of jet fuel in Asia and Europe due to conflict in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
AirAsia recently cut \u200cthe number of flights due to the spike in fuel prices since \u200bthe U.S.-Israeli war on Iran disrupted global oil markets. Fernandes said he did \u200bnot think Asia would run out of jet fuel and \u200bsaid he hoped AirAsia would return to its normal schedule in July.<\/p>\n
For Airbus, bringing a larger A220 jet \u200cto market is not a short-term decision.<\/p>\n
“Once we do \u200bthe decision we need obviously a \u200bbit of time to certify it, and the demand is really coming at the beginning of the next decade,” Wagner said.<\/p>\n
“So that’s a window we need to hit.”<\/p>\n
If produced, the option for the additional 150 would replace AirAsia’s existing A320 \u200bcurrent engine option aircraft, Fernandes said.<\/p>\n
“So we’ll end \u200cup with a fleet of A220s which could go from 160 seats to 185 and then we’ll just focus \u200bon the A321,” he said.<\/p>\n
Wednesday’s announcement confirms earlier reports of a deal for 150 A220-300 jets.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Alison Lampert \u200band Ryan Patrick Jones; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and David Gregorio)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Allison Lampert MIRABEL, Quebec, May 6 (Reuters) – Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia announced on Wednesday a firm…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[7281,90,7597,7592],"class_list":["post-9177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-airbus","tag-airasia","tag-airbus","tag-jet","tag-tony-fernandes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}