The Latvian national airline airBaltic welcomed its 44th Airbus A220-300 jet, registered as YL-ABQ, in Riga. This is the fifth Airbus A220-300 delivery for airBaltic in 2023. It is a part of the 50 Airbus A220-300which airBaltic has ordered. In addition, airBaltic holds 30 options and purchase rights for the same aircraft type.
Thus far, airBaltic has carried close to 13 000 000 passengers on the Airbus A220-300 aircraft. Airbus A220-300s of the airline have completed nearly 143 000 flights and flown over 311 000 block hours.
Since May 2020, airBaltic operates all its flights with a single aircraft type – Airbus A220-300, thus minimizing the complexity and benefiting from the additional efficiency provided by the aircraft.
The Airbus A220-300 has performed beyond the company’s expectations, delivering better overall performance, fuel efficiency and convenience for both passengers and the staff. This aircraft offers an excellent flying experience with such benefits for passengers as wider seats, larger windows, more hand luggage space in the cabin, improved lavatories and much more.
The Airbus A220-300 has a high-quality air filtering system equipped with High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) type filter that provides the best level of filtration currently available for recirculated cabin air from the very beginning of boarding, during entire flight and until all passengers have left the aircraft. The quality of cabin air is carefully controlled and is recirculated with ventilation rates that provide a total change of air 20-30 times per hour.
In addition, the aircraft is also considerably quieter – with a four times smaller noise footprint. Moreover, at the moment it is the greenest commercial aircraft in the world, as it is the first aircraft to have a transparent declaration of the life-cycle environmental impact, helping to reduce CO2 and NOX emissions by 20% and 50% respectively.