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.” airBaltic pilots will be busy flying for Eurowings, Eurowings Discover, and SAS this summer. (airBaltic) Are Eurowings and SAS testing the A220? Eurowings and Eurowings Discover have wet-leased seven A220s: five are based in Düsseldorf and two in Munich. SAS will have two to four aircraft to assist its operations. If that means that the two airlines are testing the aircraft and are considering the A220 themselves for a future purchase, “I really don’t know”, says Gauss. “I guess it is short-term capacity needs, especially for this summer. The under 150-seat aircraft seems to be the best fit. I talked to my colleague of Lufthansa here and he said that the A220 is very useful for them on routes that aren’t so much high-density leisure, but where a 150 seater fits better. I guess it is the same for SAS.” airBaltic is the biggest operator of the A220-300 in the world and has fifty on order, plus thirty options. “That aircraft is the one in most demand in the world. We are the largest operator of that type. That is an advantage because the aircraft isn’t only popular because of its capabilities, but also because of the fuel burn, which is 25 percent below any older type of that size. With the current fuel prices, you are winning. When we go back into very low fuel prices and high capacities, then, of course, our A220s will still be having an advantage, because we have a very lean cost base, although we would not be able to compete with someone who flies a twenty-year-old A320.” Map showing how airBaltics eleven wet-leased aircraft are operated by Eurowings, Eurowings Discover, and SAS. (airBaltic) Wet-leasing out the eleven aircraft doesn’t mean that airBaltic would have been surplus of them and would have parked them, says Gauss. “They would then fly something, we wouldn’t park them. In the end, we have parked them for two years (during the pandemic). In the post-Covid business plan, we took the decision to wet-lease out seven aircraft, then we changed it to nine and now we changed it to eleven. For next year, it is the same. We want to go up on capacity, but that’s assuming that there is no war in Ukraine and no more Covid.” Ukrainian war matters to Baltic states Mentioning Ukraine, airBaltic was forced to stop operations in the country on the day of the Russian invasion on February 24. The carrier has also left the Russian market. “Leaving Ukraine, for us, is not so important from the traffic point of view. It is just seven percent of our revenues. But it is important for us in the Baltics from a point of view of solidarity, because of the history here (with Russian occupation in the past – RS). We at airBaltic will do everything to help rebuild Ukraine.” All capacity previously used for Ukraine and Russia has now been moved to the network in Europe, plus two extra aircraft were placed on wet lease. “With that, the capacity is offset. Of course not the revenues, because we don’t make the same revenues when we wet-lease out. But again, the moment we have the chance to go back to Ukraine, we will do it immediately. Russia is different. Here, of course, as an airline, we would like to connect people, but it would have to be under completely different circumstances from now.” Dubai is airBaltic's busiest route. Last November, it signed a codeshare agreement with Emirates. Martin Gauss is flanked by Emirates CCO Adnan Kazim. (airBaltic) The closing of the Ukrainian airspace for safety reasons and that of Russia following the sanctions has an impact on some of airBaltic’s operations. “It’s not only the routes to Dubai that we have had to reroute, but also to Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaidjan, Greece, and Egypt. Those routes are affected by between ten and fifty minutes longer flying. The longest one is the flight to Dubai and the return flight.” With longer flying and higher fuel prices, is Dubai still profitable? “Yes, the route is still profitable, but we took the decision not to fly to Yerevan and Baku for the summer due to the restrictions. Dubai is our best route and is always full, but we are pausing it anyway for three months in the summer because of the runway reconstructions at Dubai International and we would not have had our slots. And we are using then the peak summer, when it is very hot, not to serve Dubai, but we will continue to serve it after the three months. So the runway reconstructions come conveniently for us, as we aren’t exposed to the peak summer flight that would have been critical because of that long flight.” “We had a flight of I think seven hours and fifty minutes where we were planning to land in Vilnius because the wind was so strong. But then, the flight still made it, because the aircraft is very efficient and it was decided in flight they could take it to Riga as planned. But seven hours fifty minutes is very long for us.”
