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Breeze Airways Airbus A220
CHARLESTON, South Carolina—Breeze Airways doesn’t see an immediate need for a -500 variant of the Airbus A220, concluding the extra seats aren’t necessary for its network profile.
The carrier’s CEO David Neeleman told CAPA TV during the CAPA Airline Leader Summit Americas in Charleston, S.C., that the markets Breeze operates in don’t warrant a higher gauge aircraft. Breeze has 54 A220-300s in its fleet with 137 seats split across three classes. A stretched -500 could feature 180 seats in a single class configuration. Aviation Week’s Fleet Discovery database shows Breeze has 40 -300s on order.
Neeleman explained Breeze isn’t a high load factor airline. On its “best days” load factors settle into the low 80s. He explained the stretched aircraft could appeal to a carrier like Delta Air Lines operating hub to hub that needs extra capacity.
Airbus hasn’t made a definitive commitment to pursue a stretched version of the A220. Aengus Kelly, CEO of the world’s largest lessor AerCap, doesn’t see a business case for the aircraft. “Candidly, I just don’t see anywhere in the market that the airplane [A220-500] is needed,” Kelly told analysts on AerCap’s full-year earnings call. “It’s not solving a problem that exists, in my view.”
But AirAsia, which recently placed an order of 150 A220-300s, hopes Airbus builds the larger version. “That is the aircraft we want,” said Tony Fernandes, CEO of Capital A and adviser to AirAsia. The company has committed to ordering another 150 A220s if the manufacturer does decide to build the -500.
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