SAS Scandinavian Airlines (SK, Copenhagen Kastrup) has announced it will sell 100% of its shareholding in Finnish subsidiary Blue 1 (Helsinki Vantaa) to Irish carrier CityJet (WX, Dublin International). With the absorption of Blue 1, Cityjet will then begin providing the Scandinavian carrier with capacity from March of next year onwards.
“We are looking forward to working with Cityjet to further expand our regional route network and thereby strengthen SAS’s offering to frequent travelers," Rickard Gustafson, President and CEO at SAS, said. "The eight brand new CRJ900s from Cityjet will provide us with efficient and flexible production of regional flights that will complement SAS’s production on the larger traffic flows."
SAS will wet-lease a fleet of eight new CRJ900s from Cityjet with an option on a further six aircraft. The wet lease agreement will run for three years.
Earlier this year, SAS abandoned plans to replace Blue 1's fleet of B717-200s with B737-600s once the former ended operations in November. It had intended to turn the Finnish domestic operator into a production company supplying SAS with added capacity, much like its newly announced agreement with Cityjet.
Cimber (Sønderborg) will continue to operate 12 CRJ900s on behalf of parent SAS.
