airBaltic wet-leases out more and more Airbus A220s

Passengers booking a flight on Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings and Eurowings Discover or those selecting SAS will have a fair chance of boarding an airBaltic Airbus A220-300 instead of the usual metal of these airlines. airBaltic has wet-leased eleven A220s out to other carriers this summer season, a number that it eventually plans to expand to fifteen. airBaltic wet-leases out more and more Airbus A220s.

This number is “significantly higher” from previous years, airBaltic CEO Martin Gauss

told AirInsight on the sidelines of the Airlines 4 Europe Aviation Summit in Brussels on March 31. “We have 35 aircraft in this peak summer and 40 at the end of this year. We at airBaltic are deploying 94 percent of the seating capacity of 2019 levels and we aren’t able to use more than that. Including the eleven aircraft that we have now out for wet lease, that would be significantly higher. So the business plan was always foreseeing a certain amount of aircraft for wet leasing. In 2025, we want to have fifteen wet-leased out and 35 in our scheduled operation. But have the option to change that mix.”

Other airlines have no problem finding airBaltic and enquiring for help, says Gauss: “This year, demand for the wet-lease of the A220 is so high that we basically could place the whole fleet, but our business requires us to fly the scheduled service, which is the key of our business. Once we can make more passenger revenue and profit on revenue flying, the aircraft will not fly ACMI but will come back in our scheduled operations. For next summer, we have to decide how many aircraft we hand out for wet leasing. (…) We already have global demand to place aircraft during the coming winter outside Europe and we will also place it outside Europe in summer if needed.”