AirBaltic starts Airbus A220 operations for Lufthansa

airBaltic Airbus A220-300 — Photo: © Kārlis Dambrāns

Latvian AirBaltic has started Airbus A220 wet-lease operations for German flag-carrier Lufthansa.

The airline from Riga is now flying two Airbus A220-300 (formerly Bombardier CS300) on behalf of Lufthansa on several flights to and from Munich Airport.

As of today, the flight plan shows the aircraft being used on the following routes:

Munich – Bucharest (OTP) 3x daily
Munich – Lyon (LYS) 2x daily
Munich – Luxembourg (LUX) 1x daily
Munich – Budapest (BUD) 6x weekly (from April 1st)

Lufthansa itself does not fly any A220. However, Lufthansa Group subsidiary Swiss operates 30 of the aircraft type, including ten of the smaller A220-100. The airline was the launch customer for the aircraft.

Furthermore, Slovenian Star Alliance partner Adria Airways has today started operating two daily flights on Lufthansa’s route between Munich and Stuttgart, using Bombardier CRJ-900 aircraft.

According to German aviation news site aeroTelegraph, Lufthansa will also use capacities from SunExpress. The leisure airline will use two Boeing 737-800 on Lufthansa flights from Munich. In addition, Spanish regional charter airline Air Nostrum will fly two Bombardier CRJ-1000 on several Lufthansa flights from Frankfurt Airport, the German carrier’s main hub, to Zagreb and Luxembourg.

All operations mentioned above are so called wet-lease contracts. This means that the respective operating airlines (AirBaltic, Adria Airways, SunExpress and Air Nostrum) are using their own aircraft and crew, but are flying them on behalf of Lufthansa, using the regular ‘LH’ flight numbers.

Lufthansa says these are measures to avoid issues that occurred in summer 2018, which included delays and mass cancellations of flights. The Lufthansa Group states it has a total of 37 reserve aircraft ready, in order to insure a stable summer flight plan this year.