In 2025 AirBaltic will cancel 19 routes and 5 thousand flights, leaving 70 thousand people stranded. What is happening
Having a fleet consisting entirely of only one airplane model can be an advantage in terms of the flexibility of [...]
AirBaltic
RIX
Having a fleet consisting entirely of a single model airplane can be an advantage on flexibility of operations and cost containment linked to factors such as parts procurement and crew training. Low-cost airlines, masters in this, teach. However, if something goes wrong with that kind of airplane, trouble can be serious.
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Ryanair knows something about this which, by operating an increasingly large fleet of Boeing 737 MAX, first paid for the grounding and stop delivery for over two years of all aircraft of that type as a result of incidents at Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines in 2018 and 2019. And, more recently, Boeing's snail deliveries., related to several factors including. the three-month strike by workers at the Renton plant from which MAXs are churned out.
However, recently, Reliability and maintenance problems have also plagued the engines of some aircraft models (and in this case the manufacturers had nothing to do with it). The aircraft most affected by these problems were. the Boeing 787s and Airbus A220s..
The latter mount Pratt & Whitney 1500G engines, which are creating quite a few headaches for the airlines. In 2019, following three inadvertent in-flight shutdowns within three months, Swiss decided to ground its entire fleet of A220s for inspections. More general, though, the P&W 1500G 'suffers' from 'premature turbine degradation,' requiring more frequent inspections and engine replacements than other thrusters.
Just a 'shortage' (shortage) of available engines from the manufacturer P&W this year will cause serious problems to AirBaltic which is not only the world's second largest operator of the A220 after Delta Airlines, but has only and only A220s in its fleet: 49 in all of the -300 series, with the 50th expected to arrive any day now.
Well, the Latvian company, which has its main hub in Riga, announced in a note that. during 2025 will be forced to cancel 4,670 flights from its operations, with 19 routes cancelled and 21 others seeing reduced frequencies. Nearly 70,000 passengers will be affected. From Riga there will be 10 routes canceled, from Vilnius there will be six, from Tallinn (in Estonia) two, and from Tampere (in Finland) one.
The cancelled routes do not include those to Italy, where AirBaltic flies to Rome Fiumicino and Milan Malpensa., but adjustments to operations have already begun, and it is not ruled out that, as usual, flights from Malpensa will be wet-leased by other operators.
The most difficult situation will be there during the Summer, when Air Baltic will wet-lease to Lufthansa Group (as, moreover, it has been doing for years) the beauty of 21 of its 50 A220-300s., which will operate primarily on behalf of Swiss.
