The US low cost airline JetBlue became the first customer of the Airbus A220 family (Bombardier CS), having signed the Memorandum of Understanding on the acquisition of 60 A220-300 liners under a fixed contract.
“In addition, the airline has transferred a firm contract for 25 Airbus A320neo aircraft to the contract for A321neo aircraft. The Pratt & Whitney GTF engines will be installed on the selected A321neo and A220 aircraft”, says Airbus in official statement.
The carrier will probably pay 1.4 billion USD to 1.7 billion USD for 60 Airbus A220-300 jets, or 23-28 million USD per plane. That’s a discount of as much as 72% from the deal’s list value, according to the analysts.
Deliveries of the A220-300 planes are scheduled to begin in 2020. The New York-based carrier also took an option to buy as many as 60 more starting in 2025. The airline said it hasn’t yet decided how many seats it will put on the A220-300, which can hold as many as 160 passengers. It also has the right to convert some orders to the smaller A220-100 plane, which can take as many as 135 seats.
JetBlue Airways Corporation is an American low cost airline headquartered in New York City. A major air carrier and the sixth-largest airline in the United States, JetBlue is headquartered in the Long Island City neighborhood of the New York City borough of Queens, with its main base at John F. Kennedy International Airport. It also maintains corporate offices in Cottonwood Heights, Utah and Orlando, Florida.
As of May 2018, JetBlue serves 102 destinations (the latest addition being Steamboat Springs, Colorado) in the U.S., Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and South America.
