Why Air Baltic Staked Its Future on a Next-Generation Jet
Photo Credit: Air Baltic was close to going with the Airbus A319neo before Bombardier made it a sweet deal for what was then the CS300. Now it's called the Airbus A220-300 — the aircraft pictured here — and it's been a game-changer for the airline's fleet. Air Baltic
Skift Take
It's a shame the airline business is so dependent on scale. If it wasn't, we might have more airlines like Air Baltic. Despite being passenger-friendly and innovative, Air Baltic probably can't survive long-term as an independent entity.
More than six years ago, Air Baltic, a small government-owned Latvian airline, brought in Boeing and Airbus for a spirited competition between two next-generation aircraft — the Boeing 737 Max 7 and Airbus A319neo.
Just before Air Baltic was set to choose Airbus, a Bombardier sales team popped in. "We have something," one person told Air Baltic CEO Martin Gauss, and it wasn't the regional jets Bombardier usually pitched small European airlines.
"We said, 'no, no, no,' we are going for real airplanes," Gauss told me last month. "They came and said, 'We have a real airplane coming.' We opened the process again. They pitched. They showed the aircraft. They gave the price. They gave the performance guarantee. And based on that package, we had to take a decision."
Air Baltic committed to an airplane — then called the Bombardier CS300, and now the Airbus A220 — few other airlines wanted, and it almost certainly got a great deal. Now, it has a dozen, all with 145 seats, with
