This past Saturday (02/04) landed for the first time in Santiago, Chile, the Airbus A220, the newest aircraft of the European manufacturer. The reason for the visit is the aircraft's participation in FIDAE, the largest aviation fair in Latin America.
The Airbus A220, registration HB-JCU, took off from Miami for its tour of South America, making stops in Mexico City and Panama before landing in Santiago. View the plane's tracking Clicking here.
The aircraft was temporarily leased by Airbus for the exhibition at the event, as the manufacturer hopes to get some orders for the aircraft, mainly from LATAM.
With just one year of use, the Swiss A220 is configured to carry 145 engers in a single-class configuration. This is quite comfortable, as the A220-300 can take up to 160 engers on board.
As we can see in the images above, the configuration in Economy Class is with rows of five seats (3-2), just like the Fokker 100 and the MD line, and different from the Embraer E-Jet (2-2). The seats are in leather, slim type, without entertainment system and adjustable headrest.
Swiss has 9 aircraft of the A220-100 model, and smaller capacity (125 seats), and another 21 A220-300 aircraft in its fleet. All 30 aircraft ordered by the company have already been delivered.
A FIDAE NEVER will take place between April 05th and 10th, and you can check everything here on the AEROFLAP Portal.
The Airbus A220, the aircraft that began its career as the Bombardier CSeries, has 740 firm orders, after an extensive sales campaign by Airbus.
Among its qualities, the A220 is equipped with new generation engines, very economical in of fuel consumption. The fuselage is the first narrowbody to be built entirely from composite materials to reduce overall weight. In addition, the aircraft can fly up to 6400 km.
In the coming days, Airbus A220 visit to Brazil
Along with its age through Chile and some countries in the north of Latin America, the Swiss A220 has a scheduled visit to Brazil. The aircraft should make flights across the country between the 12th and 14th of April, for demonstration to national airlines.
The aircraft should land first at Viracopos Airport, on the 12th, then head to Congonhas Airport for a local flight on April 13th. The departure from the country takes place from Guarulhos Airport, on the 14th.
As this is a chartered flight, dates and times may change without prior notice, cancellations may also occur.
In Airbus' 2020 schedule, the aircraft was expected to through Viracopos International Airport which is the base of Azul Linhas Aéreas. From Viracopos, the plane would go to Panama in a direct section. However, the visit of the A220 and FIDAE was canceled in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.