The Airbus Group's stable got a bit larger on July 11 as an A220 made its first appearance in Airbus livery. Coming fresh from the paint shop, the A220-300 landed at the company's Henri-Ziegler Delivery Centre near Toulouse, France at 12:25 pm CEST as an audience of media and Airbus employees looked on.
The debut marks the formal transfer of the former Bombardier C-Series airliners to the Airbus inventory that will see the CS100 and the CS300 marketed as the Airbus A220-100 and A220-300.
The Airbus 220 series was acquired by the Airbus Group when it went into partnership with Bombardier Aerospace in October 2017. Airbus took a 51 percent share in the project and intends to expand production to 6,000 units over 20 years with assembly in Quebec, Canada and Mobile, Alabama. Now that regulatory approval has been secured, the airliners can be marketed under the Airbus name.
According to Airbus, the A220-100 is the smallest airliner in the company's current production line-up, seating 100 to 135 passengers. Meanwhile, the A220-300 seats 130 to 160. Both single-aisle aircraft use advanced aluminum structures and carbon composites, share commonality in over 99 percent of the line-replaceable units (LRUs), and use the same Pratt & Whitney PW1500G fanjet engines. While the A220-300 has greater range, the A220-100 is capable of taking off from city airports with shorter runways.
"Everyone at Airbus has been looking forward to this historic moment," says Guillaume Faury, Airbus President Commercial Aircraft. "Today, we are thrilled to welcome the A220 to the Airbus family and are honored to see it wearing its new Airbus colors for the first time. I pay tribute to all the women and men at Bombardier and the supply chain who have strived over the past years to bring this fantastic aircraft to the world. The A220 now enters a new phase in its career with all Airbus' resources behind it to further its commercial success worldwide."
Source: Airbus